


Tether

by PolarisAmane



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2018-03-17 09:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 52,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3524039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PolarisAmane/pseuds/PolarisAmane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This had to be the work of an artefact, some glorious wonderful artefact that probably had the crappiest of downsides. She couldn’t smell fudge. She was still going to bag every item in that room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been a long time since I actually liked a pairing enough to want to write about them, and a longer time still since I actually liked them enough to sit down and actually do some writing. I feel a little rusty. I feel like this fic was mostly me flailing about and trying to get a grip on the characters, with varying levels of success. 
> 
> This fic is set in one of those lovely made-up post-season 4 worlds where Helena came back. There will be some mentions of certain events from season 4, others will be ignored, and Season 5 just plain didn’t happen. Because it didn’t.
> 
> Enjoy! Or don't. Your enjoyment is, of course, your choice.

The kettle whistled on the hob startling Helena from her thoughts. She had been staring out the window, watching Steve meditating in the centre of the lawn. She had been lost in thought. Though now that she was no longer thinking of it she couldn’t quite remember what it was she had been thinking of, so perhaps just lost then.

She gave herself a little shake and turned the heat off to shush the shrill whistling. The B&B blessedly owned a proper kettle rather than an electric one, Leena had shared her opinion that water should be boiled the old fashioned, the trade off for convenience was not worth the subpar cup of tea it made. Nate hadn’t even owned an electric kettle; he had simply heated the water in the microwave and had been genuinely baffled by her horror at this. 

She dropped a teabag into her cup and then added the water, spoon knocking against the side of it as the teabag cheerfully bobbed to the surface like a buoy on the rising tide. The cup had been a gift from Claudia; it had a cartoon of a moustachioed gentleman sporting a monocle proclaiming: “Egad!” on it. The gentleman looked a little like Charles, if Charles were to have ever worn a monocle. She had pretended to be offended when Claudia had presented it to her but completely unable to hide her smile. Everyone here had their own silly mugs so when Claudia had presented her with it; it had felt very much like she made some kind of amends. Arthur had actually harrumphed at her the first time he’d seen her sipping tea from it. That had made her smile also; Arthur only harrumphed when he was especially happy.

She finished making her cup of tea: tea bag fished out and deposited in bin, small amount of milk added, stir, and spoon tapped against the rim of the mug because the action inexplicably made a better brew, and – righty-ho – she was done. She cradled the mug in her hands, enjoying the heat just starting to infuse it, and set off from the kitchen. It was a quiet afternoon and Artie had chased them from the Warehouse. He and Abigail were taking care of something or other and didn’t need the rest of them hovering about. Claudia and Pete had both headed into Univille, the former with her guitar slung over her shoulder, the latter excitedly gibbering something about pie. Helena, Myka and Steve had retreated to the B&B.

Normally when presented calm moments like this Helena would retreat to her room seeking solitude, to sit quietly with a book, she had so much reading to catch up on, or perhaps she would do some writing. Since returning she had found that her mind was crowded, more so than usual, and she had difficulty focussing on one single thought or idea. Often they slipped away from her like water through her fingers, and then they remained like a stubborn damp patch that she couldn’t shift but could not mould into anything useful. So she had bought a notebook, several notebooks in fact, and a nice set of pens and had been furiously scribbling in them ever since. She had not yet dared read what she had jotted down.  
She headed through to the sun room though because Myka was there and regardless of what her brain might be thinking her feet were going to take her to Myka.  


The conservatory doors were open, but there was no breeze so it did little to affect the temperature of the room, which was on the unpleasant side of warm. Myka was sat at the table, her hair pulled back into a messy bun and her brow furrowed in concentration. 

Helena paused and considered retreating to the safety of her room. Myka’s service pistol was disassembled and laid out on an old cloth on the table top. She had a piece in hand and was currently scrubbing away at it with a small brush. The conservatory doors had obviously been opened to air out the smell of solvent. Before Helena could leave Myka raised her head. 

“Hey,” she said quietly, a smile quirking at one side of her mouth.

Helena was powerless to do anything but smile warmly back. 

“Hello.”

She crossed the room and pulled out the chair opposite Myka and sat down, she raised one leg so that she could rest her heel against the edge of the seat and sipped quite noisily at her tea. Myka was used to hearing Pete eat and drink though so paid no mind to Helena’s atrocious manners. She simply smiled and then returned to her work, her hands sure and steady as they handled the various pieces of her service weapon.

Funny how such a violent device was rendered meaningless once divested of its parts. The spring was hardly lethal, nor the slide, more a useless piece of metal. Seeing it lay bare like this, its innards exposed, it was easier to see it as a tool rather than a brutal instrument. 

Funny also how sure Myka’s hands were. How confident in their movements, her long fingers elegant as they carried out their task, so precise and focussed. Often Myka’s hands seemed intent to work against her, as though they possessed a mind of their own. Helena had watched Myka as she had fumbled with books, seen files helplessly slip through her fingers spilling their important documents on the floor, her hands scramble and fail to catch wayward artefacts as they tumbled from the shelves. She was banned from handling Helena’s mug for fear that she would drop it.

But put a gun, or a sword, in Myka Bering’s hand and all that awkwardness disappeared. Her hands were steady and sure, filled with intent and unwavering in their focus. The only time Helena saw a similar confidence in Myka’s hands was in the bedroom, where her sure, strong fingers could expertly traverse the map of Helena’s body, and Helena would always be helpless against her touch.

“What?” Myka asked, a small laugh accompanying the question.

“Hmm?” Helena raised her head.

“You’re staring, and smirking. What is it?”

“Just thinking.” Helena tapped her fingers against the mug, her ring surprisingly loud against it.

“About?”

“You.” Honesty always worked best with Myka, and she was rewarded with the faintest of blushes and Myka ducking her head. “And the gun,” Helena added.

Myka paused and frowned at the brush and slide in her hand. The topic of guns and the necessity of carrying one into the field was a well worn conversation with them. Helena did not see the need for guns when they had Teslas, Myka disliked that Helena went out without the added “protection” of one.

Rather than rehash that conversation though Myka bent her head down and continued with her cleaning, though perhaps with a bit more vigour than previously applied. Helena was content to sit back and watch her. Myka was endlessly fascinating to observe; the way her brow furrowed in concentration, how she would capture her bottom lip with her teeth as her fingers worked on cleaning the slide, the way she would tip her head back and look down on whatever was in her hand, a single brow arching high as her mouth fell open and the way she would curl her tongue against the back of her teeth. A tendril of hair had escaped from its bindings and was hanging by Myka’s face tempting Helena to reach across the table and to tuck it behind Myka’s ear.

She took another mouthful of tea instead. If she were to touch Myka now then she wasn’t likely to stop, and although they practically had the B&B to themselves, Steve was well distracted by his own Zen-like state, it would just not do to engage in any kind of sexual activity in a public room, not because of propriety or any such nonsense like that, but because Pete always knew. Always. He would come home and he would just stand there and grin at them, and then Myka would cover her face with her hand and blush and look like she very much wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. And then there would be an awkwardness that would last at least a couple of days, made worse by Pete attempting to high-five either of them at random moments. So Helena took yet another mouthful of tea, cooling by the second, and continued to watch Myka work.

Eventually Myka finished and began to reassemble the gun, her movements quick and confident with practiced precision. Helena’s mug sat empty on the table. The room smelt like cleaning solvent. She ran her fingers through her hair, flicking it out at the back and then let it settle back in place.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” she asked just as Myka pulled the slide back the clicks sounding far too loud.

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“You serviced your gun just last week. You’re clearly attempting to keep your hands busy.” Helena smirked at her, or leered, sometimes they were one and the same. “I have to admit I’m a little disappointed you didn’t come to me. I can think of much more interesting ways to keep both our hands busy.”

One of Myka’s eyebrows went up and a smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” 

Myka placed her gun down on the table but rather than continue with their little exchange she exhaled, and then chewed her lip while she rubbed at her leg under the table.  


Helena’s smirk disappeared and she frowned. “What is it?”

Myka licked her lips, her eyes darting about the room. Helena was starting to feel a little apprehensive. Finally Myka raised one shoulder in a lop-sided shrug. “Tracy called.”

Helena barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. A call from Tracy might mean anything from a genuine family emergency to her just wanting to inform Myka that her child had successfully mastered the art of sitting up on her own, and Myka would treat both with similar levels of anxiety.

“Oh, and what did Tracy have to say?” Hopefully that her thoroughly dull husband had suddenly developed a personality.

“It’s my parents’ anniversary. Their wedding anniversary. Forty years.” Myka fidgeted with the brush she had been using to clean the gun. “They’re having a party. Well,” She tipped her head to the side and shrugged, “more a family dinner.”

“That sounds lovely,” Helena said. She leaned back in her seat and let her leg slide to the floor. Myka might have slowly been repairing her relationship with her father but it was easy to see why the prospect of a family dinner would make her anxious. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself.”

“We,” Myka corrected. “We’ll enjoy ourselves. Tracy invited you as well.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She said: ‘you and Helena have to come.’ so we’re both going.”

What to say to that? She didn’t want to go to this dinner. She had only met Myka’s family the once before, and while her mother had been perfectly pleasant if a little confused that her daughter had brought a woman home with her, her father had been just as awful as Helena had assumed he would be, and she had quickly got into an argument with him about Arthur Conan Doyle. Warren Bering seemed to have been under the utterly mistaken impression that he had somehow won the argument, citing ridiculous books and essays as evidence to his point. Helena had been sorely tempted to throw in his face that she had known Doyle, so she would know better than some trumped up scholar born decades after Doyle had died. Tracy she had just found to be far too exuberant for a woman who had just had a baby.

“No,” Helena said slowly, carefully.

“No?” Myka raised both eyebrows.

“That is what I said,” Helena clarified in the same slow measured tone. But Myka was shaking her head.

“Oh no. No. Nooooooo. No!” Myka rose in her seat, eyes widening and filling with a determined almost angry light. “If I have to go then you have to go.”

“Why? They’re not my family.”

Myka actually looked a little hurt at that, it was a brief flash in her expression that neatly cut down the rising anger that had been there previously and was quickly covered, but it had been there.

“Still, they’re my family and so are you, so you’re coming.”

“Fine,” she bit off. She huffed out a breath and pouted a little. “When is this dinner?”

“Next week.” Helena raised an eyebrow, and Myka laughed humourlessly. “I know, short notice.”

“Well, here’s hoping for a world ending crisis to keep us busy.”

Myka snorted. “We’ll never be that lucky.”

/\/\/\

There was no world ending crisis. Nor a minor crisis that would require their attention just long enough so that they’d miss the weekend, or even something small that would only require Helena’s attention. And so they were going to spend their weekend in Colorado Springs with Myka’s family, and not just with her parents but with her sister, Tracy, and Tracy’s ever dull husband, Kevin, and no doubt their child also. Thankfully the list of attendees ended there as, from what Helena had gathered from Myka’s mostly stuttered and mumbled explanations, both sets of grandparents had passed on, and any other family members that might have attended were not on speaking terms with Warren.

Helena yawned, her hand covering her mouth. Myka looked as tired as she felt. Her eyes were red-rimmed with dark shadows beneath them, and her complexion was wan. Kevin, Tracy’s utterly boring husband, looked just as bleary eyed as he took the hold-all from Helena’s hand and headed towards the car. Helena watched with some satisfaction as the plastic wheels on the case refused to spin and Kevin struggled to keep it from tipping over. 

“Is he okay to drive?” Helena asked quietly as they followed several steps behind him. As well as struggling with the hold-all Kevin’s feet were dragging as though every step was an effort.

“I guess,” Myka replied.

Kevin had the look of a man whose baby wouldn’t sleep through the night. He also had a small sick stain patch on his shoulder, but possibly he already knew about that.

Outside the air was still and warm and near unbearably dry. Kevin, with some force and little care, placed the hold-all into the trunk while Myka and Helena climbed in to the car, Myka in the passenger seat and Helena in the back. They had wanted to hire a rental but Tracy wouldn’t hear of it and had insisted that Kevin would pick them up. They had also wanted to stay in a hotel but Jeannie wouldn’t hear of that and had insisted that they stay with her and Warren.

“How was the flight?” Kevin asked as they pulled away.

“Fine,” Myka replied. They had been sat near a crying child. The father of said child had slept through his spawn’s squeals, while the mother, upon resigning herself to not being able to quiet her child, had stared forlornly out the window as though she wished that she could just tip herself out of it. Helena and Myka had just grit their teeth and tried to ignore it.

“And how’s Univille?” Kevin seemed intent on making small talk. He was probably starved of adult conversation.

“Fine.”

“Work?”

“Also fine.”

Kevin nodded and they drove in silence for some time. Helena considered closing her eyes and dozing but it always seemed rude to do so. The driver couldn’t very well sleep so for her to do so felt wrong.

“You’re quiet back there.” Kevin’s eyes flickered up to the rear-view mirror. “Everything okay?”

“Things are magnificent,” Helena answered dryly.

“How was the flight for you?”

“Ghastly.”

Myka’s head fell back against the seat. “Please don’t start.”

“I was just –”

“Don’t.”

Helena pressed her lips together. Myka had been becoming gradually more stressed as the weekend approached. Her sense of humour had fled in the face of her anxieties and thus she had been an absolute joy to be in the presence of these past few days. Even Pete had been giving her a wide berth, forgoing his usual teasing. Claudia had taken to leaving the room when Myka entered. Only Steve and Artie had seemed unaffected by Myka’s mood, Steve because so very few things seemed to bother him and Artie because no-one could out grump him.  


Interestingly Kevin reacted as though he had been the one rebuked. He sank down in his seat, his shoulders stiff. Perhaps he felt a measure of guilt for stoking the flames of a minor domestic.

Helena kept her silence and smiled amiably at the back of Myka’s head.

/\/\/\

Kevin dropped them off outside of Bering & sons and fled before he’d get dragged into a conversation with the in-laws. Sensible man.

Helena wrestled with the hold-all – utterly useless contraption! – while Myka stood rigid and stared at the front of the shop as though it were a prison she was condemned to spend the rest of her life incarcerated in.

Helena moved to Myka’s side. “Ready to face your parents?” Myka only frowned in response. “Myka.” Helena placed her hand on Myka’s back. She was so tense; her muscles hard and locked beneath Helena’s fingers. “Darling, we could just not go in, yes? Go find a hotel and then take the next flight back home.”

Myka managed a small laugh. “Tracy would have a fit.”

“Who cares?” Helena moved closer, nearly pressed against Myka’s side. She rubbed her hand slowly across Myka’s back and slowly, oh so painfully slowly, she felt the tension inch away. “If you truly do not want to go in there then we won’t. But I promise you that if we do then it won’t be nearly as bad as you’re imagining and you will at least be grateful that you spoke with your mother.”

“You think?”

“Always. Incessantly. As do you, and that is why we’re standing out here rather than going inside.”

Myka’s shoulders slumped. “I’m being stupid, aren’t I?”

“Not at all.” Helena smiled.

“Okay.” Myka stood up straight once more; she rolled her shoulders back and fixed a determined look on her face. She pointed a stern finger at Helena; the quirk of her lips betrayed the serious look in her eyes. “Best behaviour. I don’t want a repeat of last time.”

“That was your father’s fault,” Helena countered.

“You called him a dour ignorant ass.”

“Arse. I believe I called him a dour ignorant arse.”

“Still. Best behaviour.” 

“Very well.” Helena mock saluted her.

Myka nodded once, determination carved into her expression, and then she marched towards the door, opened it much more meekly than expected, and entered the establishment. Helena followed bringing the loathed hold-all with her.

Under different circumstances Bering & Sons was the kind of shop that Helena would love. She could have happily spent hours wandering among the shelves and losing herself to the books. 

Miserable though he might have been, Warren Bering had amassed quite the collection of first edition classics. That her works were counted among this collection was endlessly satisfying. She couldn’t fault his taste in literature. She certainly couldn’t fault his one act of fatherly kindness in reading her works to his eldest daughter. She most certainly could fault that it was his only act of good parenting, but if he only had it in him for one good turn as a father then she was glad that this had been it. How different her relationship with Myka might have been if Myka had not first fallen in love with her words.

It was evening so the store was, despite the unlocked door, closed. The door chimed upon opening, an awful electronic blare that made Helena twitch, and once more as it swung closed behind them, alerting Jeannie Bering to their arrival. She stood up from behind the counter, dropped the book she was holding onto the counter top with a notable thump, and smiled warmly.

“You’re here,” she said moving out from behind the counter.

“Hey Mom,” Myka greeted not unenthusiastically but it certainly could have used a bit more oomph, as her mother kissed her cheek and pulled her into a hug.

Jeannie’s eyes turned to Helena. “And you’re here too.” Surprisingly she hugged Helena too, though it was admittedly stiff with awkwardness and with only a trace amount of the warmth Myka’s had. “You’re father is upstairs. I’ll lock the door and then we can go up.” She went to do just that, and Helena took the opportunity to move closer to Myka. “How was the flight?” Jeannie called across the store.

“Fine,” Myka answered and she shot Helena a look that clearly said she shouldn’t contradict her.

“Have you eaten?”

“On the plane.”

“Okay.” Jeannie returned, graced them both with a smile. She squeezed Myka’s bicep. “It’s good to see you, to have you home.”

Myka clearly couldn’t quite return the sentiment. She nodded and smiled tightly. Jeannie had the look that all mothers got when their children returned to them, all moist eyed and pleased as punch with a heavy dose of worry. 

Helena curled her fingers against the small of Myka’s back, gently scratching her though the fabric of her shirt. The three of them were standing ridiculously close together, and perhaps Helena should have stood back and allowed this moment between mother and daughter, but she couldn’t quite make herself do that.

“Come on then,” Jeannie said finally and ushered them on.

This was actually the first time Helena had been to the Bering’s home. It was pleasant, small, but pleasant. The last time they had visited Colorado Springs they had visited Tracy and the ever dull Kevin; that Warren and Jeannie were there also had been a surprise. Now Helena took the opportunity to soak in the home that Myka had grown up in. It was pleasing that nearly every wall had a bookcase against it and that every bookcase was stuffed full with books. Well worn, clearly read many times books. There were also ornaments, someone, Jeannie if she had to hazard a guess, was collecting little porcelain ballerinas and nearly every shelf had at least one on it, and there were photo frames dotted hereabouts, one of which was bound to contain a picture of Myka as a child that she would have to seek out.

They pulled off their boots and left them on a well-organised shoe rack by the door, and Jeanie led them to the living room. She sat them down and then bustled off to make coffee and tea. Helena glanced around them room, her eyes scanning over the mantelpiece that had more ornaments, a small pile of books and a dish containing bits and bobs; then to the small television set in the corner of the room, and then to the far wall with its tall bookcases. It wasn’t a large room but the Bering’s had managed to cram it full of furniture. Helena could just imagine Warren down on hands and knees with a tape measure, mapping out the room precisely so that he could fit the optimum amount of furniture in it.

Clutter was something the Bering’s seemed to have in abundance, but it was all such well organised, precisely placed clutter that it rather defeated the point of it. It was easy to see where Myka got her fastidious neatness from.

Helena turned from her room viewing and angled her body towards Myka, knocking their knees gently together. She took hold of Myka’s hand in her own to stop her fidgeting if nothing else, and contemplated kissing away the line between her brow brought on by frowning.

“Are you alright?” she rubbed her thumb in circles across the back of Myka’s hands.

“Fine.”

Helena rolled her eyes. “Is that going to be your primary method of communication his weekend? Fine?”

Myka turned to her, eyes narrowed and brow still marred by a frown. Helena couldn’t help it. She kissed the corner of Myka’s downturned mouth, felt the beginnings of a smile, and then placed her lips to Myka’s forehead. “There,” she said, pleased, murmuring against Myka’s skin. “Now it is better than fine.”

“That simple, huh?”

Helena sat back. “It could be.” It never was with them.

“You’re here then.”

Myka and Helena separated at the sound of Warrens’ voice. He stood in the doorway hands loosely at his hips, a frown on his face. He didn’t appear to be anywhere near as pleased as his wife had been to see them.

“Yeah,” Myka said in a flat voice.

“You eaten?”

“Yeah. On the plane.” Her voice was still flat.

“And before we boarded,” Helena supplied. 

Warren grunted and made his way into the room. He sat down on the sofa opposite them. All of his movements were slow and precise, as though he took a moment to think about them before carrying them out. He rubbed his hands together; his fingers sliding across his palms with a deliberate slowness that might have been a calming gesture from anyone else but was unsettling coming from him. He stared at his daughter; his brow was knotted together and his mouth downturned. The silence was thick with awkwardness. A clock in the corner of the room ticked away unaware that it was interrupting family issue time.

Helena still had a hold of Myka’s hand; she could feel the tension in it as it gripped her own, see the way the skin was stretched tight over her knuckles and the way the tendons stood out.  


She rubbed her thumb across Myka’s knuckles, startling Myka who looked down in surprise, as though she had forgot that Helena was there and now that she had remembered she was suddenly aware that she was holding Helena’s hand in front of her father. Warren’s gaze was grim and disapproving, but that seemed to be the only expression he was capable of so it was difficult to take it too seriously. Disappointingly Myka must have taken his look seriously as she unwound her hand from Helena’s. 

Warren cleared his throat. Struggled to find his voice, and then, “how was your flight?”

“Awful,” Helena said cheerfully before Myka could claim that it was fine. “We were sat near a screaming child.” Myka glared at her. “Well we were,” Helena defended.

“Your gun?” Warren acted as though Helena hadn’t even spoken, his beady eyed focus zeroed in on Myka.

“Dismantled. Case.”

Warren nodded, and finally turned his gaze to Helena. “And yours?”

Helena didn’t carry a gun, but he didn’t know that. He thought she was a Secret Service agent like his daughter, and what kind of Secret Service agent didn’t carry a gun into the field?

“Same,” she said the lie coming easily to her. 

They were saved from more awkwardness with the arrival of Jeannie carrying a tray with four steaming mugs and a plate of homemade cookies. She set the mugs down, three coffees and a tea for Helena. She offered the plate of cookies to Myka who, surprisingly, took one, and then to Helena.

“No, thank you.”

“You sure?”

“I don’t really have a sweet tooth.” And the sight of Pete stuffing as many cookies into his mouth as he possibly could had put her off them for life.

Jeannie placed the plate on the table and sat back looking a little disappointed. Neither she nor Warren took a cookie. They both watched Myka as she slowly raised her cookie to her mouth and took a bite. She chewed. They continued to watch. She swallowed and offered a small tight smile.

“It’s good.”

Jeannie beamed. Warren scowled as per usual. Helena considered climbing out of the small window behind her. She had sat handcuffed in a small room awaiting the Regents pronouncement of her fate and had felt more comfortable than she did here.

“I’ll make another batch and you can take some back with you,” Jeannie said. “Pete will like them.”

“Oh, he will that,” Myka said. She inelegantly stuffed the last of the cookie in her mouth and washed it down with a gulp of coffee that must have been too hot to drink.

“You look well. You both look well. Don’t they look well, Warren?”

“Yes.”

They both looked quite manic: Warren with his downturned mouth and small hard eyes locked on his daughter, and Jeannie all wide-eyed with worry and trying too hard to make them feel welcome. Helena very much wanted to retire to their room and get some rest. She suspected that Myka felt the same. Neither of them had slept much last night. Helena often had trouble sleeping anyway; Myka had tossed and turned for most the night making sleep next to impossible. For obvious reasons neither of them had slept in the plane.

Jeannie seemed determined that this would be family bonding time and launched into telling Myka about everything she had missed while away from home. About family and friends. About the store. About those she went to high school with who either had not left or had returned to raise families of their own. She put a certain inquisitive emphasis on the word family and glanced at Helena. Helena had choked on her tea and, judging by Warrens’ scowl, now possibly looked like she was considering climbing out the window.

Each word from her mother seemed to add another weight to Myka and she slumped that little bit more as the minutes ticked by. Helena hooked two fingers through the belt look on Myka’s jeans. The way she was sinking down into the couch she was like to fall through it and through the floor, and then continue to fall into oblivion. So Helena gripped her belt looped and kept her grounded. Or so that Myka could take her with her if she was to make an improbable escape through the upholstery and wooden floors.

Finally Jeannie ran out of things to say. She drained her coffee, placed the mug onto a coaster and smiled at the pair of them. “And how are you both?”

“Fine,” they said in unison.

“Good. Work?”

“Also fine.” Myka tucked her hair behind her ear. “It’s, y’know, good. Keeps us busy.”

“Not too busy?”

Myka made a non-committal noise and shrugged. Not so busy that they didn’t see each other but often busy enough that it felt like they hadn’t seen each other for weeks. Too often it felt as though the only time they saw each other were when they fell into bed at the end of the day. Too often one of them would already be asleep leaving the other to tiredly crawl into the bed and curl up around the other, and then wake up alone because the other would have an early start.

One of the few appeals of this weekend was that they would be able to fall asleep together and wake up together, and all without a Warehouse emergency. Not that they weren’t discounting something artefact-related happening. There were several static bags and gloves in the hold-all as well as Myka’s Farnsworth that was wrapped in an old t-shirt and stuffed at the very bottom, hopefully not to be used.

Jeannie seemed pleased though. “I expect your both tired after your flight. I’ve prepared your room. Had to shift some boxes to make room but its good.”

Myka stood up quickly pulling Helena’s hand still clinging to her belt loop up with her. Helena unhooked her fingers, and felt the warm tingle of a blush on her cheeks. She stood up as well, slower and more measured than Myka. She brushed imaginary dirt from her jeans and offered a quick smile for Jeannie and Warren who were tactfully ignoring her clingy display, before turning to Myka. “Shall we?”

“Thanks mom, dad.” Myka grabbed the handle of the hold-all with one hand and Helena’s with the other, and pulled Helena from the room.

“Yes, thank you,” Helena called over her shoulder as Myka dragged her through the door. “Myka, slow down,” she said quieter.

“Sorry.” Myka stopped; she kept hold of Helena’s hand and smiled sheepishly. “I had to get out of there.”

“Quite alright, it’s perfectly understandable. So...” She squeezed Myka’s hand. “I am eager to see your room.”

Myka grimaced. “Prepare to be disappointed. It’s very small.”

The entire apartment was small so that her bedroom was also small was no surprise. It must have been hell having two young children confined in such a small space, and worse having two adolescents stomping about in that way youths did, as though the only way they could make their presence known was by flouncing dramatically.

Myka’s bedroom was at the end of the hallway next to the bathroom. The door was plain, white wood with no decoration to signify that it was Myka’s. Helena had seen that it was popular among families to put their children’s names on their door usually with a garish plaque, but if the Bering’s had done so with Myka and Tracy then they had long since taken them down.  


Myka pushed the door open and held out her arms in what might have been best described as a sarcastic flourish. “Ta-da!” she said in a sing-song tone that matched her gesture.

Undeterred, Helena stepped into the small space between Myka and the door and looked around the room. Small was a generous description, this was little more than a box. The open door nearly touched the base of the bed. To get into the room proper you would have to step onto the bed or press yourself flat against the wall and pull the door closed. Apart from that though it was... pleasant. A small cabinet sat next to the bed with a lamp and unplugged alarm clock on it. There was a desk with no chair and nothing of interest on it, a shelf above the desk was crammed dangerously full with trophies of various sizes, a couple of medals and ribbons hung off the edges. Next to the desk was a book shelf packed with books. Disappointingly there didn’t appear to be any photographs.

A camp bed had been set up in the narrow space between the bed and the desk.

“We’re ignoring the camp bed, yes?” Helena asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Myka nodded. 

Helena turned and backed into the room; she sat down on the bed and shuffled back. She grinned at Myka. “Join me?”

Myka huffed out a laugh. She swung the hold-all round the door and dumped it on the ground before shuffling round the door, rolling her eyes as she pushed it close. She crawled up the bed and flopped down on her side next to Helena making the bed both creak loudly and rock alarmingly.

“So,” she said. Her fingers played with the hem of Helena’s shirt.

“So,” Helena repeated, not at all enjoying the way the bed was still swaying.

Myka shuffled closer to her, her head ducked down so that her chin was pressed against Helena’s shoulder. She plucked at the fabric of Helena’s shirt. “What do you think?”

“I think that this room is... small.”

Myka chuckled. “I told you. Tracy’s room is bigger, and mom and dad’s bigger still. This is the smallest room in the apartment. Even the bathroom is bigger.” Myka’s hand slipped beneath Helena’s shirt and pressed against her stomach making the muscle quiver.

“My curiosity is mostly satisfied, though I warn that I am going to rifle through your trophies.”

“Fencing, mostly.” Myka’s mouth moved against Helena’s shoulder and she pressed her teeth there, not quite a bite but enough pressure to make Helena’s heart flutter up a tempo. “There’s one for a spelling bee I won when I was, like, nine. A couple for mathletes.”

Helena had once attended a spelling bee to watch Adelaide. It had been interesting, overzealous parents putting enormous amounts of pressure onto their children to win. Adelaide had not won; she had not even got as far to earn any kind of trophy or prize. When Helena had offered condolences and said that: “there was always next time,” Adelaide had merely shrugged and once in the car had promptly correctly spelled out the word that she had got wrong, leaving Helena feeling bewildered.

Helena eyed the trophies. Had Myka’s parents put similar amounts of pressure on Myka during these competitions? She could well imagine Warren being like that, and then never being satisfied with the results.

She tilted her head back and looked at the small window. Myka’s room was at the back of the apartment and the window offered a rather thrilling view of a wall.

“What is it?” Myka’s fingers scratched Helena’s stomach, and Helena rolled onto her side to face her, tucking one arm beneath her head.

“Why did Tracy have the larger room? Surely one of the perks of being the elder sibling is that you get the better room.”

Myka’s eyes looked to the side and she chewed on her bottom lip. She shrugged a shoulder. “Tracy wanted the room. She had more stuff. She had friends stay over a lot too so needed the floor space, ya know, for sleepovers and stuff.” She said this very quickly like she was offering excuses rather than an explanation.

“And you did not have friends stay over?”

Myka sucked in a breath. She had gone tense again and continued to worry at her bottom lip. “No,” she said finally, exhaling.

Helena felt a pang of sympathy and a deep aching sadness. Myka must have had friends when she was a child; she had on occasion mentioned names, but it was all too easy to imagine Myka as a terribly lonely child.

Helena had not been a lonely child. She had grown up surrounded by family and friends, and even after she had burned so many bridges she had always had Charles, and irritating as he had been he had always been there for her. When she had had Christina she had never had the opportunity to feel lonely. Even ostracised as she had been she had not felt its painful bite. Christina had been enough for her. The gentle flame of her life had been enough to heat Helena’s entire world. It was only after Christina was gone that she had felt the cold grasp of loneliness. Slowly it had crept up on her, dug its claws in and worked its way under her skin and infused her soul. It had come with her into the bronzer and been her companion whispering terrible things to her in the dark while she had shouted and screamed into its void. 

She had stepped out of the bronzer into an unfamiliar world, with unknown faces and with the knowledge that everyone she had ever loved was dead. That familiar emptiness was with her, threatening to suck her down. Even now, surrounded by a new family, she felt it, one step outside of their circle, the pull that threatened to drag her away. Only Myka kept her tethered, constantly reeling her back in.

If Myka had been lonely then she hoped that it had not been that terrible.

She ran her fingers along Myka’s jaw, her thumb pressing against the tip of Myka’s chin. Gently she kissed Myka’s bottom lip to soothe away where she had been chewing on it. She slipped her hand around the back of Myka’s neck, keeping her in place and kissed her again, properly this time, deeper and longer. She thrilled at the feel of Myka pressing closer to her, their legs tangling together. Myka’s hand slid under the back of Helena’s shirt, fingers pressed against skin and over the notches of her spine making Helena shiver.

Myka hummed, she pulled back and licked her lips. “No. Not here. Not in this bed.”

“Why not?” Helena sighed. She let her hand trail from Myka’s neck down to the collar of her t-shirt and tugged it aside so that she could press her fingers to her clavicle. “I can be quiet if you can.” They both knew that that was a lie.

“Because,” Myka said. Then, smiling, she jostled the bed making it creak and sway on its legs. “Because that. Also because this is the bed I slept in as a kid.”

“Oh boo-hoo, would we tarnish your childhood memories?”

“Yeah actually, yeah, we would.”

“Very well.” Helena sighed far too dramatically. “But it is bad form Agent Bering to get a lady all hot and bothered and then leave her unsatisfied.”

Myka laughed. She seized Helena’s face in her hands and pressed a quick hard kiss to her mouth. “I barely touched you.”

“My point precisely.” Didn’t Myka understand that that was all it took? The barest of touches, a fleeting glance, to make Helena’s blood heat, to surge. Sometimes Myka vastly underestimated the effect she had on Helena.

“I’m sure you’ll survive.” Myka kissed her again and then disentangled herself from Helena’s limbs. She slid over Helena, which was enjoyable for the too brief moment she straddled Helena, and then stood awkwardly in the tiny space not occupied by the camp bed.

“What are you doing?” Helena propped herself up on her elbows and watched as Myka began pulling the bedding from the camp bed.

“I’m putting this away. ‘Cause while I appreciate mom doing this, I also just don’t.”

Helena laughed softly. “And then you’ll join me again?”

Myka glanced up from her work. Her eyes tacked down and then back up Helena’s body. She smiled. “Sure.”

Helena leaned back and enjoyed the sight of Myka bending over several times.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to Colorado Springs and to anyone who is familiar with the city. I am, as you will probably see if you read this, am not. Everything I know about Colorado Springs I learned from google searches, most of which were about the climate and parks. Turns out there's quite a few parks. I went with Bear Creek simply because I like the name.
> 
> I touch on some stuff here that I know others have written about as well. Sorry if I’ve stepped on anyones toes.

Myka blinked up at the ceiling. When she was little she had wanted to put stickers of the planets up there. She had seen them in a store; little stickers of the planets and of stars, even the moon and sun, that glowed in the dark. Most children would have just stuck them wherever they wanted, a mess of stars with a planet here or there, but not Myka. Myka was going to put them in their proper place so that she could lie back in her bed at night and gaze up at the solar system. But she hadn’t been allowed, of course she hadn’t been allowed. It had taken her weeks to muster up the courage to ask her dad, to explain to him what she was going to do, to make it sound educational so that it could be something he approved of. He hadn’t even listened to her explanation, the very second she had mentioned that they were stickers he had said no. They would mark the ceiling. The idea that they could simply paint over the marks once the stickers came down didn’t seem to occur to either of her parents and Myka had been too afraid to suggest it.

Tracy had been allowed to put posters up. She had put up posters of pretty boys from bands that Myka hadn’t paid any attention to, of singers and models and actors. It was alright to mark the wall with posters to fuel Tracy’s hormones but Myka hadn’t been allowed her educational stickers. Years later it still seemed completely unfair and Myka could still feel the bitter sting of disappointment and resentment that she had silently suffered through then.

The ceiling had been painted fairly recently, or at least since the last time Myka visited. It looked brighter, and the dull damp patch that had been steadily growing in the corner was no longer showing.

She sucked in a breath, held it while she counted to ten, and then exhaled. Her parents might have painted the ceiling but they hadn’t invested in a new mattress, or even bothered to flip this one. Every familiar lump and out of place spring poked her in the back, every old dip was there to cradle her as it had all those years ago. If she closed her eyes it would almost be like she was a child again. Everything was so familiar: the mattress, the smell of the linen, the sounds carrying through the open window, the only real difference was the warmth and weight of Helena sleeping next to her. She lay half across Myka, one arm flung across Myka’s stomach, one leg tangled up with Myka’s and the bed sheets they had kicked down during the night because it was too hot. Myka’s left arm was trapped between their bodies; her right arm lay above her head, her fingers idly playing with her hair. She could feel the soft expulsion of Helena’s breath against her neck.

She could stay like this forever. With Helena draped over her and sleeping peacefully. Just lay there staring up at the starless ceiling, in the peace and quiet, with the smell of faux lavender, listening to Helena breathe. Just breathing. It was one of Myka’s favourite sounds. The long slow inhale, the brief moment she held it and then the soft exhale, the deep steady rhythm of it. It meant that Helena was here, that she was alive, that she was safe, and that she was happy. Mostly happy. 

But this was the wrong room, the wrong home. Her father and his narrow disapproving eyes were outside of these walls, and even the walls proved inadequate protection from him. She could feel his presence in the room, minutely, but it was there. Like a thin layer of dust it coated everything.

And with the thought of her father all the ease of earlier vanished. She could once again feel the bubble of anxiety that had been steadily growing in her all week. It pushed up against her lungs, making it difficult to breathe.

She was going to have to get up. She couldn’t just lay here, not with this weight pressing on her.

Carefully she untangled her legs from Helena’s and made the attempt to climb over her without waking her up. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen. Helena was a light sleeper. Myka had known her to wake at the slightest shift in pressure on the mattress, so of course she wasn’t going to sleep through Myka unknotting their limbs. Helena stirred, her brow scrunched together. She pressed her face into the pillow. Myka slipped one leg over her and put her foot to the floor and, with a surprising amount of grace and balance, swung her other leg over Helena too. That she managed to do this without kneeing or kicking Helena was a minor miracle, sometimes having freakishly long limbs was a good thing.

Helena grumbled sleepily her voice muffled by the pillow. She raised her head and looked blearily at Myka. “...What?”

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.” Myka dropped a quick kiss to Helena’s temple. Helena’s head fell back to the pillow and she actually looked as though she had gone back to sleep. She might have been a light sleeper but she was a slow riser.

Myka reached for her phone on the bedside cabinet. She nearly knocked over the glass of water she had procured during the night and her glasses before managing to pick up her phone. She pressed the back of her free hand against her mouth as she yawned, checking her phone: no messages and no missed calls. It was also later in the morning than she had previously thought. 

She crossed the small space of her old room, hissed as she knocked her knee against the folded up camp bed. She went to the hold-all and started pulling out clothes, stacking them neatly while she looked for what she wanted. Her MP3 player was annoyingly at the bottom next to the Farnsworth and more static bags than she normally took on a regular ping. Her contact lenses were also lost among the folded clothes. She dressed quickly and quietly, her sweats and tank top already making her feel that bit better.

She’d known that being back at her parents would bring all her old anxieties to the forefront of her mind. That her mind would just start churning over, replaying her childhood in every painful detail, that all of her daddy issues would bubble to the surface like scum on a pond. It didn’t matter that her relationship with her dad was better than it had ever been, that they were both trying still to make it better, it was still tense, still fraught with past hurts that Myka would never be able to forget and possibly never able to forgive.

There were only two ways that could properly clear her mind, one of which she had already, much to Helena’s disappointment, barred. So she was going to have to go for the second option. It would have to be enough to mentally prep her for spending the weekend with her family.

“What are you doing?” Helena asked her voice thick with sleep.

“Going for a run.” Myka stood up and tied her hair back. She had found her contact lenses case snuggled between one of her t-shirts. She fumbled with the case a moment before setting it down on the desk and unscrewing the top. Her hands seemed to be extra clumsy this morning. Fortunately she managed to get her contacts in without poking herself viciously in the eye. It would be just her luck to do just that and ruin every single family photo that Tracy was no doubt planning on taking by giving herself a swollen, bloodshot eye. 

She blinked, the room coming into sharper focus, and turned around.

Helena looked half-asleep still, her eyes half-closed and her lips parted and shiny like she’d just licked them, and her hair – oh god her hair! She had some serious bed-hair going on, the back of it was all mussed up like someone, most likely Myka in her sleep, had worked their hand into it. 

Myka bit her lip and stared. Just stared for a moment while Helena looked this dishevelled and this unawake. It was rare for Helena to look this disarranged. Myka had to suppress the urge to cross the small space between them and reach down and work her fingers back into her hair, to mess it up further, and then to kiss her and press her back down into the mattress and to spend the morning here in bed. 

Sometimes she thought that she liked Helena best in these moments. When she dropped her guards and seemed at ease with the world around her, and with Myka especially. It was rare for Helena to drop her guards; she kept so many of them up even with Myka. It seemed that there was always, just always, a front with Helena, and it was only in these very quiet moments where it dropped.

She had probably watched while Myka dressed. She had one arm tucked beneath her head, and even with her eyes heavy with sleep she still had a calculating look there. So probably still a few guards in place. That made it easier to leave and go for her run rather than stay and curl back up with Helena.

Myka crossed the small room and leant over the bed to kiss Helena. “Do you want to come with me?”

“What time is it?”

“Six-fifty.”

Helena groaned and pressed her face back to the pillow. She waved Myka off and said something that was absorbed by the pillow but was probably a negative, Myka laughed softly and kissed the corner of Helena’s jaw. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

She grabbed the MP3 and unwound the head phones that had, despite her careful wrapping, become a horrendous tangled knot that ensnarled the device, and opened the door.

“Myka?” Helena called softly. Myka turned; Helena was watching her with soft eyes and furrowed brow. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Myka put the buds in her ears and forced a smile. Helena’s frown only increased and she watched Myka intently as though she would be able to discern the lie. Finally she sighed, nodded, and dropped her head back to the pillow.

“Enjoy yourself.”

Myka left the room closing the door gently behind her, and prepared to listen to whatever playlist Claudia had prepared for her. 

/\/\/\

Much like her childhood room and her parents home, the area of Colorado Springs she had grown up in hadn’t changed all that much. There were differences, small ones, a new sign, a closed store or one newly opened; things that the majority of people wouldn’t notice.

She had fallen into an easy rhythm of running, of breathing, following the path she had taken as a teenager when her fencing coach had insisted that she do something about her crap stamina. She had run nearly every morning, increasing the distance as her stamina and strength increased. She had loved those morning runs, the safe space they had given her just for a moment, time to forget about her family and the weight of her father’s expectations. To forget about school and to forget about Tracy, and to leave every little worry she had behind.

It didn’t work like it had done. Today she had brought all of her worries with her. Bundled them up and stored them in the back of her mind. They were a weight, an aggravating itchy weight that with every pump of her legs shifted and made their presence known. Pushed to the back of her mind but certainly not forgotten. Her mom’s pleased voice, her father’s disapproving eyes, the knowledge that she would have to see and speak to Tracy, and even Helena. Helena with her flippancy and her smirks, and the way she was projecting her irritation at being here. 

The only thing that went right with the run was that she didn’t happen upon anyone she knew. Still she stayed out longer than she had originally planned. It might not have been the mind clearing bliss she had wanted but it had meant she’d escaped her father for a brief time. But she had to go back. She had essentially abandoned Helena to her family, and really, that might possibly be grounds for a breakup.

So she ventured back; hot, sweaty and out of breath, sucking on some sugary tasting sports drink that she was probably going to regret drinking later.

She by-passed the shop; it wouldn’t be open yet but her father would already be in it getting ready for the day ahead. Her mom might be there as well, or possibly she’d be bustling around the apartment irritating Helena.

Myka made her way to the kitchen. She couldn’t hear her mom or even Helena, which probably meant that her mom was out or even that Helena was still in bed. That was unlikely. Once Helena was awake she rarely managed to go back to sleep. 

Plastic bottle clutched in one hand, Myka pushed open the kitchen door with the other to find Helena sitting at the table with a mug of tea reading the paper. She couldn’t have been up that long since her hair was still damp from her morning shower.

She looked up and smiled. “Enjoy your run?”

“Yeah.” Myka took a swig of the sports drink, wrinkled her nose at the taste, and then banged the bottle down on the table top harder than she meant to. Helena raised her eyebrows at Myka. Still a little out of breath, Myka couldn’t quite summon an excuse for her clumsiness. She tilted her head to the side and lifted a shoulder in a half-assed apology. 

She crossed the small kitchen and began opening cupboards, looking for something to eat. She spied a bunch of bananas sitting on the countertop near the microwave and grabbed one of them. She turned around and leant against the counter. Helena was inspecting the bottle.

“Why is it blue?”

Myka shrugged. She peeled the banana, broke off the top and popped it into her mouth. “Where is everyone?”

“Your mother is in the store.” Helena placed the bottle back and turned to face Myka. “Your father is in the living room with Tracy.”

“Tracy’s here?” Myka swallowed. The banana went down her throat in a hard, painful lump.

“Yes. Her daughter too.” That last bit was said with a tight voice. Crap. Was that going to be a problem? Myka had considered it, briefly, intensely but briefly, and then the thought had got lost beneath the landslide of thoughts and issues concerning her family. She had been too focussed on how she was going to survive a whole weekend of family time.

She stuffed more banana in her mouth and considered going for another run.

Helena’s eyes flickered down the length of Myka’s body and then back up. She smiled, a little too pleasantly. “I have been told by your mother that I am to make sure that you eat a proper breakfast.”

Myka rolled her eyes. “After I shower, I’m gross.”

“I completely disagree.”

“You would.” It was a little bit too difficult to keep from smiling. She pushed from the counter and chucked the banana peel in the trash. She heard the sound of Helena’s chair being pushed out and when she turned Helena was standing close by, a smirk teasing her lips and a glint in her eye.

Myka raised a wary brow. She knew this look all too well, and while normally it was something she thrilled to see, and it still set her stomach fluttering, it wasn’t one she wanted while standing in her parents’ kitchen. “...What?”

Helena tilted her head to the side. “Why are your parents so intent on feeding you?”

“Its... it’s nothing. It’s stupid.” Myka pressed a hand to her head, to her hair. She really didn’t want to get into this just now, or ever. Besides, it was stupid, incredibly stupid. And explaining it to Helena would be embarrassing.

“Alright,” Helena said slowly, measured. Myka could tell by her tone that this would be a conversation they picked up again later, probably once they were back home in the safety of their own room. Then Helena smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling. She was already standing so close to Myka that they were nearly pressed together, but she managed to close the gap further. She tucked her thumb to the point of Myka’s chin and tipped Myka’s head back and, quickly, pressed first her lips and then her tongue to Myka’s neck, licking a long stripe up to the hinge of Myka’s jaw.

Myka squeaked and stepped back, pressing her hand to where Helena’s tongue had swiped her skin. Helena stepped with her, keeping her face pressed close to Myka’s neck, a hand gripping Myka’s hip.

“Helena!” She cried, but Helena only laughed deep and throaty and so incredibly sexy that Myka felt it more than heard it, breathed against her neck. It was like a sharp strike of heat at the base of her spine. Why did they have to be here? Why couldn’t they be at home?

“Oh. Wow.” Myka raised her head, Tracy stood in the doorway one hand held in front of her face like she was blocking them from her view. “This. This right here. Seeing my sister get her neck licked by her girlfriend is on my list of things I never wanted to see.” She dropped her hand and shrugged. “I mean it’s not high on the list but it’s definitely on there. Also, hey, you’re here!” She crossed the kitchen with quick strides, Helena stepped back out of her path, and she pulled Myka into a hug.

“Hey, Trace.” Myka returned the hug, not as enthusiastically as Tracy but she was still glad to see her sister.

“Oh, gross, you’re all sweaty.” Tracy stepped back and wiped her hands down her pants.

“I just got back from my run.”

“Ah yes, the ‘let’s avoid breakfast with dad’ run.” Tracy turned to Helena. “Did she warn you that she would do that?”

“She did not.” Helena had picked up her mug of tea and had retreated to the far end of the kitchen. She cradled the mug in both hands, her eyes fixed on Myka, no less intense than they had been before. There was still the teasing twist to her lips that promised things that Myka just knew wouldn’t be followed through on till they got home.

“I just wanted to go for a run.” The fact that it meant she missed family breakfast had always been coincidental.

“Sure, whatever you say.” Tracy rolled her eyes and for some reason Helena laughed at that. Myka shot Helena a look but she was hiding her smile with her mug.

“You look good,” Tracy continued. “Healthy. I mean your hair is atrocious, but otherwise you look great.”

“What?” Myka pressed a hand to her hair. It was so like Tracy to undermine her compliments.

“You hair is fine, darling,” Helena said softly. “A little windswept perhaps, but otherwise fine.”

“You look like you got dragged through a bush,” Tracy added. “All you’re missing is a few twigs and leaves.”

Helena was looking at Tracy like she couldn’t quite decide if this was normal, friendly sibling banter or if she should be stepping in to defend Myka’s honour. The way she was weighing the mug in her hand suggested that she might bludgeon Tracy with it if she insulted Myka again. 

Myka smiled. As funny as that would be, and it wouldn’t actually be at all funny, it was probably a good idea to shift focus.

“Well, you look great too,” Myka said. Tracy beamed at the compliment. She was still carrying a little pregnancy weight and – god! – it was a good job Pete wasn’t here because he would just not at all have been able to look Tracy in the eye. It was surprising that Tracy was still holding her post-pregnancy weight; Myka had expected her to be straight at the gym as soon as she could. She had always taken so much pride in being slim and in shape.

“Thank you,” Tracy said and she sounded so grateful that any lingering feelings of resentment over Tracy’s inability to give a compliment without following it up with an insult dissipated.

“Right. Well.” Myka straightened up and clapped her hands together. The atmosphere in the room was starting to get weird. “I’m going to go shower. I’m gross and apparently my hair is a mess.”

“Oh! Before you do that.” Tracy grabbed Myka’s hand and hauled her from the kitchen. Myka looked over her shoulder at Helena but she just offered a bemused shrug. “There’s something you should see,” Tracy continued quietly. She dragged Myka to the living room door, turned and pressed her finger to her lips. She motioned for Myka to look in the room, her eyes wide with eagerness. Myka frowned. She could hear her father’s voice, soft and murmuring something. She could also hear the occasional baby babble that must have been Chloe, Tracy’s daughter.

She poked her head around the doorway and immediately snapped back, staring at Tracy in open mouthed shock. She looked again just to make sure she hadn’t imagined the whole scene. Her father was sat on the floor, on a colourful play mat that stood out starkly against the pale carpet, with his granddaughter. He had her cradled close to him leaning back against him since she probably couldn’t quite support herself yet. He was pointing out various things on the play mat while she gurgled happily and made nonsense noises and slapped her hand down on the mat. Her dad was smiling, actually smiling; bright and warm and like this was the happiest he had ever been. The smile took years off of him; it stretched those familiar scowl lines in unfamiliar ways. He hardly looked like her father at all.

Myka stared at Tracy, her eyes goggling. She couldn’t close her mouth, couldn’t remember how to close her mouth. This had to be the work of an artefact, some glorious wonderful artefact that probably had the crappiest of downsides. She couldn’t smell fudge. She was still going to bag every item in that room.

“I know, right?” Tracy whispered. “He’s been like that ever since she was born. It’s like he’s trying to win an award for world’s most doting grandpa.”

“This is weird.”

“Completely,” Tracy agreed, and then quietly, a little resentfully, “Mom thinks he’s trying to make up for lost time. He’ll be reading H.G. Wells to her in no time.”

Myka laughed. That would actually be perfect. Helena would love it. “Reading was the only good parent-thing he ever did.”

“Yeah,” Tracy exhaled, “sucks that he couldn’t have been like that with us.”

“Yeah.”

Tracy was staring at her, a little sad, a little thoughtful. She hadn’t spoken to their father for years. When she went to college she had simply cut ties with him, only keeping the barest contact with their mom. Myka didn’t know what, after so many years, had prompted her to suddenly try and repair their relationship. 

“He never read to me,” Tracy said quietly.

Myka stared. Tracy looked away and swallowed. She ran a hand through her hair and then looked back to Myka, her eyes shining with unshed tears. She fixed a bright smile on her face, just that little bit too wide, and without saying another word to Myka she went into the living room.

“Hey guys, what are we playing?”

Myka stood in the hallway for a long moment just breathing.

/\/\/\

Showered, changed, contacts out and glasses on, and freshly caffeinated Myka felt much better. More alert, better focussed, able to deal with the day ahead.

She had called the Warehouse to make sure that everything was okay. Artie had answered with an irritable, “What?” and looking harassed. She had been hoping for Pete to answer, so that her feeble utterance of just wanting to check in wouldn’t sound so pathetic and needy and such a bare faced excuse to avoid speaking with her parents. Artie didn’t have anything pressing to report and neither did she ,so she had signed off, closed the Farnsworth and tucked it safely amongst her and Helena’s clothes and back in the hold-all. She had sent Pete a text just to make sure he was alright and to give him a quick rundown of events thus far and received a reply that was a mess of emojis that she managed to decipher into meaning something about ice cream.

It had been tempting to just sneak past the living room and to avoid her father and subsequently her niece but she knew that would just be giving her dad ammo to criticise her with later. So she had popped in to spend the bare minimum amount of time with Chloe.

Chloe had looked a mixture of bewildered and horrified by the sight of her aunt, which wasn’t surprising; Myka was practically a stranger to her. She begged off holding Chloe, she had already ruined playtime with Grandpa, she didn’t need to make the morning worse for Chloe by manhandling her. Instead she had sat settled for giving Chloe a tickle-poke, a too bright “hi,” and had fled at the first sign of tears. She’d had her fill of screaming infants on the plane.

She had gone to the kitchen and dragged Helena away from her umpteenth cup of tea. That Helena had sequestered herself in the kitchen told Myka everything she needed to know about how Helena felt about spending the day with the family.

Myka paused on her descent from the apartment to the shop to straighten out her t-shirt. It was bunching up at the back where Helena kept touching her. She gently slapped away Helena’s hands that were still making an effort to rest on her hips or just to cling to her in any way they could. 

The store was close to empty. It was still pretty early in the morning so that wasn’t surprising. Myka emerged from the back room with Helena so close on her heels that she risked standing on Myka’s feet. There was only one customer as far as Myka could see from here, but there might have been a couple more towards the back of the store hidden behind the bookcases.

She reached behind her and took hold of Helena’s hand, it was dry and cool in her grip and Myka was acutely aware that her own hand was warm and clammy. 

Her mom was behind the counter engrossed in a book. Myka pulled Helena along silently behind her as she rounded the counter and made sure she approached it from the front. Her mom looked up as Myka and Helena neared and smiled warmly.

“Hey,” Myka greeted. She glanced down at the book. It was a gardening book, the kind of book someone would keep on their coffee table as a decoration rather than as an actual guide to gardening.

“Good morning,” her mom answered. She looked past Myka to Helena and her smile dimmed just that little bit as she nodded a greeting. She turned back to Myka. “You missed breakfast,” she said reproachfully.

“I know. I just had it now.” Myka waited for Helena to refute this, to point out that a banana and a cup of coffee hardly constituted a proper breakfast, but she didn’t say anything. Myka looked over her shoulder. Helena clearly wasn’t paying attention to the conversation; she was gazing out over the store with a faraway look in her eye. 

“Would you mind if I nosed around a bit?” She asked, her eyes lingering over the rows of books.

“Knock yourself out,” Myka replied. Helena seemed more at ease than she had been expecting. Certainly she seemed better than she had yesterday, where her bad mood over being dragged out here had been infectious.

Helena squeezed Myka’s hand, smiling, and then sauntered off, losing herself among the books and leaving Myka alone with her mom.

“If she finds something she wants she can have a discount.”

“What?” Myka snapped back round to face her mom. “I don’t get a discount but she does?”

Her mom looked nonplussed, as though handing out discounts to her children’s partners was something she had always done and she was confused as to why Myka could possibly be annoyed. 

“Kevin gets a discount too, so she should have one. It’s only fair.”

“But I don’t get one?” Myka said incredulously. “How it that fair?”

Her mom frowned. She tucked her bookmark between pages showing a photo of a bush of some kind and a diagram of what was probably a planting method and closed the book. Her mother’s interest in gardening had only ever extended as far as reading about it.

“As I remember it you used to order all sorts of different books into the store.”

“I still had to pay for them.”

“Yes, but you paid less than you would have if you’d gotten them from another shop.” She sighed, clearly aggrieved by the direction the conversation was taking. “If you don’t want Helena to have a discount then we won’t give her one.”

“That’s not the point. That’s not what I’m saying. Of course she can have a discount. It’s just that –” Myka exhaled noisily. What was the point? She was just bringing up old resentments and giving them a new spin. Her mother hadn’t understood all those years ago, she was hardly going to understand now. 

Myka pushed her fingers up under her glasses to rub her eyes. Growing up, her mother had always been a quiet refuge away from her father. Never speaking up or acting out to stop him, but always ready with soothing words and to hold her through the tears. The older Myka grew the less she had sought out her mother for comfort and the more she had just looked for quiet solitude.

How many meals had they sat through where her father had rebuked her over her posture, her table manners, her school work, and any other little detail of her life he could find fault with? Her mother had remained silent through them all.

“It doesn’t matter,” Myka said. It had never mattered before so why would it now?

Her mother nodded slowly. She wasn’t looking at Myka. She looked down at the book on the counter top and picked at the edge of its dust jacket. She cleared her throat. “What are your plans for the day?” she asked quietly.

Myka shrugged. “Nothing much. Thought we’d go for a walk, show Helena some sights. Maybe grab lunch.”

“That’s nice.” She looked up, her expression troubled. She inhaled and pushed herself up from the desk. “Myka,” she started.

Something like panic rose up in Myka. Her mother’s troubled expression had a determined air to it, like she was gearing up to impart some great wisdom or offer Myka life advice, or worse, start a heart to heart. 

But she didn’t. She just looked at Myka for an excruciatingly long moment, and then gave herself a little shake. She smiled ruefully. “It doesn’t matter. Did you see Chloe?”

“Yeah,” Myka exhaled. “Yeah, I did.” The panic didn’t leave. It was stuck in her chest, making it hard to breath, forcing her heart to work overtime. 

“Hasn’t she grown?”

Myka deflated, relief and disappointment churned in her gut in equal measure.

“Yeah,” she repeated, her tone bordering on monotonous. She’d never understood the amazed enthusiasm people expressed over babies growing, as if they were genuinely surprised by it, as if growing wasn’t exactly what babies were supposed to do.

Her mom took no notice of her lack of enthusiasm and took this opportunity to fill Myka in on Chloe’s young life thus far. Myka nodded along and made the occasional noise when required. This was familiar, hearing her mother fill the silence with idle chatter, and Myka felt the panic in her chest loosen that little bit. 

Helena, finished with perusing the store, glided up to them just in time to hear the end of a story that involved the joys of baby bodily fluids.

“Gross, mom,” Myka said. She felt Helena’s hand pinch and tug at the hem of her t-shirt.

Her mother laughed softly and said, “You’ll know when you have your own.”

Helena’s hand had become a fist, the fabric of Myka’s shirt twisted in her grasp. Myka could feel the pull of it, the quiver of Helena’s arm. But when Helena spoke her tone was mild.

“Yes, nothing says I am truly a parent than the first time you get the baby’s sick up in your mouth.” She smiled at Myka and tugged on her shirt once again. 

“Again: gross.”

Helena made a strange noise that might have been a nervous titter. She tugged more forcefully on Myka’s top. “Are we ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Myka said loudly; much too loudly. “Yeah,” she said again in a more reasonable tone of voice. She groped for Helena’s hand, the one that was currently stretching and probably ruining her t-shirt. 

Her mom was watching Helena, her brow furrowed and her head tilted. It was a familiar expression, one that Myka knew she often wore herself. She could practically see the cogs turning in her mom’s head as she regarded Helena, as though Helena was a piece of a larger puzzle that she hadn’t yet figured out where it went.

“I’ll see you later, mom.” Myka pushed herself from the counter and dragged Helena away before her mom could ask the question that was clearly bubbling away in her mind. 

“What are you doing for lunch?” Her mom called after them.

“We’ll have it out!” Myka yelled back over her shoulder. 

“Well, okay, but make sure you actually have it.”

Myka wrenched the door open and stepped out into the morning sun pulling Helena behind her. She must have moved with more force than she meant to as Helena staggered to a stop beside her.

“Sorry,” Myka said watching as Helena rubbed at her wrist.

“I feel as though I should be the one apologising. I thought that perhaps you would want a moment with your mother.”

“It’s alright. I did, sort of, just not that moment.”

Helena nodded like she understood perfectly what Myka meant, which was surprising given that Myka wasn’t too sure herself what she had meant. 

“Where to then?” She asked glancing around them.

“Anywhere but here,” Myka answered determinedly. She picked a direction and marched.

/\/\/\

Myka’s sunglasses were slipping down the bridge of her nose. She sighed, stood still and scowled, scrunching up her nose as though that might somehow pull them back into place. She had been adjusting the stupid things all day, one hand always poised to push them or to pull at one of the legs. Pete had sat on them on their last retrieval. Her fault, she had left them on the seat of her car and she knew fine well that Pete never looked before he sat. She had a cup of herbal tea in each hand, both hot, and both already threatening to burn her.

She started walking again towards where Helena was waiting for her. Without her hands free she couldn’t adjust the glasses, and she with how clumsy she’d been all day she didn’t want to risk putting a container of hot liquid near her face. 

Two kids came tearing past her and she had to turn sharply to her side to avoid them. Neither of them apologised.

Myka sighed again. She continued scowling at her sunglasses as they crept ever further down her nose. It was very tempting to swear but she swallowed down the urge. Since escaping the confines of her parents’ home Myka’s day had only improved, and she wasn’t going to let two kids with no manners ruin that. Or the too hot tea she was carrying. Or even her stupid broken sunglasses that didn’t sit on her stupid face properly.

She quickened her pace. Her hands really were starting to burn.

Helena had her back to her and was leaning on a railing overlooking a grassy space that was occupied by dogs and their owners.

“Here.” Myka held out one paper cup for Helena.

“Thank you.” Helena took it and cradled it in both hands apparently oblivious to the searing heat of it. She turned back to gaze out over the park. Her head was tilted to the side, her posture loose and relaxed, suggesting that the tension that she had been carrying for the previous day had dissipated. 

One of the posts was wide enough and with a flat enough top that Myka could rest her tea on it without it spilling. She might have been okay if it did topple off the post. Why was she drinking hot tea on such a ludicrously hot day? It was madness. But Helena had wanted a cup of tea, and Myka had leapt to the opportunity to fulfil this request with the same frantic energy that she felt when she desperately needed to contain an artefact before it killed several people.

She shook her hands and flexed her fingers; the skin was hot, sweaty and prickled uncomfortably. Her sunglasses were now down to the edge of her nose and in serious danger of falling off her face. She snatched them off and squinted at them. They were prescription so the world became a blurry indistinct mess.

Since leaving the store they had wandered aimlessly. Myka hadn’t made any kind of plans for how they would spend the day, and that felt unusual and at odds with herself. So they had walked without any destination in mind; they had stood outside shops and peered through the windows, occasionally going in though neither of them bought anything; they had watched the odd street performer, there was an unusual amount of them pretending to be statues, which was annoying since Helena could easily discern when they moved and Myka always found her eyes drawn to the neck where their pulse beat steadily; and they had wandered some more. Eventually Myka had realised that she was following the route she had taken as a child when she was avoiding going home, when she had nowhere else to go. She’d grabbed Helena’s hand then changed direction, and they had hopped on a bus and found themselves at Bear Creek, amongst hikers, children and dog walkers. 

Myka had talked the entire time. Babbled, really. Anything to avoid there being silence between them. Helena had listened, she had asked the odd question, nodded along, and walked so close to Myka that the back of her hand had continually brushed against Myka’s. 

It had been nice. It had been pleasant. It was heart-juddering perfection. The kind of thing that normal people who lived normal lives did. The kind of date that Myka had never taken her on because when would they ever have had time? The kind of thing they might do if they did lead normal lives, where they would go for a walk with no destination in mind, maybe get dinner and drinks afterwards, and then return home and collapse into each other. 

They could do this, she knew. Even with the crisis that the Warehouse occasionally liked to throw at them or the artefact madness, or even their both being caught up with the family she had built around the Warehouse taking up her time. They could do this, neither Artie nor Pete or anyone else at the Warehouse would begrudge them asking for time to be together, but it apparently hadn’t occurred to either of them to either ask or to make it themselves.

Myka turned the sunglasses in her hands, squinting because the sun was in her eyes and because it was the only way to bring things into slightly sharper focus. She couldn’t see what was wrong with them; they were bent, the frame twisted or something. In all their wandering they should have found opticians to fix them.

Helena had turned to watch her. She leant sideways against the railing, her elbow propped up. The cup of tea was still clutched in both hands; the pale skin along her fingers was turning pink. She held out her hand.

“Give them to me,” she commanded.

Wordlessly, Myka handed over the sunglasses and Helena gave her her tea. Myka settled the cup on the post next to her own, there was only just enough room for both cups, and they wobbled, threatening to fall off. Helena held the glasses delicately in her slim fingers, turning them over in her hands, inspecting them from different angles. Her brow furrowed as she ran her thumbs along the lines of the temples to the temple tips, pushing harder and bending the thin metal.

She definitely seemed better today – her eyes brighter, her smiles softer and without that brittle edge. Her irritation leading up to this visit had been infectious, with yesterday being the worst. Nearly every word out of her mouth had a bitter edge to it. Nearly every word that Helena had spoken to her parents had been aggressively polite. Myka had sat in her parents too small living room, feeling the burning gaze of their scrutiny and the waves of dismay at being there radiating from Helena, dreading the moment when it all went up in flames because her father had said something, or perhaps they would realise that Helena’s politeness had sharp edges. 

Myka looked down at her feet, at the dry dirt and dust that coated the toes of her boots.

Helena didn’t want to be here. Myka didn’t really want to be here either, but she had dragged them out regardless. When Tracy had called she had felt that pull, the little hook in her chest that was attached to the cord that was her family. It was her parents’ wedding anniversary so she had to attend, but she knew that if Tracy had called and informed her that they were just having a family dinner minus the special occasion then she still would have attended. She probably would have dragged her feet about it more and possibly, maybe, whined a little about it, but she would have caved eventually.

She would always have that feeling of obligation towards her family, that when they called she had to report for duty and act the part of responsible eldest child. A small voice in the back of her mind reminded her that loved played its part; because she did love her family, no matter how much they annoyed her, or how much she resented certain members, or had hurt her in the past, she loved them, and there was always the hope that it would be better this time.

It was better. Her father was better with her, not kind but less inclined to openly criticise her. She could see at times when he struggled to think of what to say to her, where he held back his impulse to question her choices. That he had largely kept his opinion about Helena, and Myka’s relationship with her, to himself had been both a relief and a disappointment. Myka had been carefully thinking up and storing away defences and arguments she would use against him if he had questioned their relationship or if he dared to express any form of disapproval. It would have been the one of the very few things that she would have fought him on. He could question her career and she would deflect and explain; her choice in clothes and she would shrug it off; her hobbies and she would nod and mostly ignore him; but her relationship with Helena was where she had decided to draw the line where he could tolerate his disapproval and harsh criticisms. 

She had expected it from him when she and Helena had last been in Colorado Springs visiting Tracy. They had called in almost unexpectedly having taken a detour on their return journey from a successful retrieval. It had been a chance for Myka to finally meet her new born niece, to catch up with Tracy and introduce her to Helena. A way for Myka to test the waters, Tracy was always the safer option and Myka had known that she would be nothing short of supportive but there had been that niggling little doubt in the back of her mind, that little fear that Tracy wouldn’t be fine with it and would be disgusted, and that Myka would never be able to share the happiness she had found with Helena with her family. When they had arrived at Tracy and Kevin’s house they had found that Myka’s parents were already there, so Myka’s plans of easing Helena into her family – because it had in part been for Helena’s benefit, a small way to protect her – had failed spectacularly. She had unintentionally brought Helena to the lions’ den and while Tracy had been just as okay as Myka had mostly known she would be; her mother had been confused and concerned in equal measure, and her father utterly silent. What had meant to be a quick, pleasant social call had quickly devolved into a melee of awkward questions from her mother, stammered explanations from Myka, and Tracy showing far too much interest in Myka’s personal life all served with lukewarm tea. 

Her father’s silence had been steely. His gaze had primarily stayed locked on Myka, only occasionally lazily moving to Helena, flickering over her but never lingering. Myka had waited for him to say something, to make a disparaging comment, something off hand but no less hurtful. But he hadn’t. Perhaps he had sensed it, seen in her rigid posture as she had quivered with the effort to hold back years worth of pent up resentment and anger, had known that whatever he might say would be the thing that would break the dam she had built up over the years and that he’d be drowned in the resulting flood. Perhaps he had thought better than to voice any objections he might have had. Perhaps he was truly accepting of her relationship with Helena, but if he was he kept it to himself.  
Myka leaned back on the railing. The metal was warm on the bare skin of her arms but, thankfully, not hot. Helena was muttering to herself as she worked on attempting to straighten out Myka’s glasses. Behind them a dog was yapping excitedly. Myka closed her eyes against the glare of the sun.

It had been better, but perhaps not because her father was trying but possibly simply because she had brought Helena here with her. Easier for her to manage the family stress simply because she could just walk out and spend the day doing absolutely nothing with Helena. If she wanted to she could take Helena’s hand in her own, slide her fingers between Helena’s and just hold on while they watch people go by. She could lean over and place a kiss to the corner of Helena’s mouth, currently pressed into a thin displeased line as she fiddled with the sunglasses. She could do these things without a single care in the world.

She could walk away from her family, away from her father’s displeasure and her mother’s worry, away from Tracy’s exuberance and casual insults. She didn’t even have to think about the Warehouse. The world was not on the brink of ending, there was no maniac wielding an artefact endangering everyone around him, Pete had not licked Alfred L. Cralle’s ice cream scoop again (that she knew of, she would check in later just to make sure). Her family was safe, and her family here in Colorado was also safe.

Her only care in the world right this second was what she and Helena were going to do next. 

She smiled. The sun was in her eyes, her boots were filthy, that dog behind her was loud and incredibly annoying, and Helena was in the process of breaking her sunglasses beyond repair. She was happy.

“Thank you,” she said turning towards Helena.

“Don’t thank me yet; I very well might make them worse.”

Myka didn’t doubt that for a second. Helena had ruined several pairs of her own sunglasses by attempting to make them more comfortable. She could build a time machine, fix the Gooery with her eyes closed and successfully dismantle and reassemble the most complex machines without knowing anything about them beforehand, but bending a thin piece of metal so that it would sit comfortable over the curve of an ear was apparently beyond her skills. Myka was expecting a lens to pop out any second.

She toed the gravel beneath her boot sending up little clouds of dust. “I mean thank you for coming. For agreeing to come.”

Helena paused. She raised her head and stared at Myka. Even though Myka couldn’t see Helena’s eyes behind the tinted lenses she knew that they would be wide.

“I had a choice?”

Myka’s shoulders tensed. She took a step back, her heel dragging through the gravel.

“Of course you had a choice.” Without her glasses Helena was blurry and Myka couldn’t make out her expression, but she thought that she might look surprised. 

“That’s not the impression I had.”

“You had a choice,” Myka insisted. “And I am glad that you chose to come.”

“I am fairly certain that you insisted that I attend this. I am fairly certain that I was not given a choice.” Helena emphasised every other word by stabbing the air with Myka’s sunglasses. “I am fairly certain that there was an unspoken threat of awful things that might happen to my person should I refuse to attend.”

Myka clenched her jaw and glared at Helena. “Now you’re just making things up.”

“Yes, but it sounds so much more exciting now, doesn’t it?” She smiled, her shoulder pricking up once like they did when she was especially pleased with herself.

“You had a choice,” Myka muttered a little petulantly and she slumped against the railing. The two cups of tea wobbled but didn’t topple over. It might have been possible that Myka had bullied Helena a little into coming, but only a little.

“Here, try them now.” Helena handed Myka her sunglasses back. Myka took them and slipped them on where they sat askew on her face.

“You’re right. You made them worse.”

“Give them back,” Helena commanded once again, her tone clipped. She snatched the glasses form Myka’s outstretched hand and peered at them.

Myka picked up one of the teas and carefully folded back the tab on the plastic lid. The tea had cooled considerably but it was still too hot to drink. She had burned her tongue gulping her coffee last night. There was a raw patch near the tip of her tongue that she kept touching, almost compulsively, against her teeth. 

“Try them now.” Helena took the cup from Myka’s and pressed the newly adjusted glasses into Myka’s hands. 

Myka put them on. They were better than they were: they sat straight, were not in danger of slipping down her nose, and both lenses were still present. They pinched a bit at her nose but she could ignore that.

“They’ll do.”

Helena smiled, pleased and a little smug. She sipped her tea and leaned back against the railing, looking out at the dry, patchy grass.

They should have been standing in the shade. Helena didn’t do well in the heat; the skin on her back and shoulders was already starting to turn pink, and Myka knew that it would be hot to the touch.

Helena’s top was round necked and cut low. Not low enough that Myka had a clear view of her cleavage, but low enough and wide enough that Myka could see the perspiration gathering along Helena’s collarbones and lower still. 

Helena’s bone structure seemed almost as fine and delicate as a birds and while Myka knew that Helena was far sturdier and much stronger than she appeared she still liked to, sometimes, be as gentle as she could be with her, as though she might break if Myka applied too much pressure or was careless with how she held her. She liked to gently trace the lines of her skeleton, to follow the lines of her clavicle, her scapula, to dance her fingers down her spine and count her ribs. To follow these lines like a map and to mark her favourite destinations with her lips and tongue. 

She eyed the dip between Helena’s shoulder and collarbone, the shallow well it made. She raised her eyes to find Helena watching her, her lips twisted into a knowing smirk.

Myka turned and reached blindly for her cup of tea. She nearly knocked it over, managed to get a hold of it, and picked it up. She tore the little plastic lip back and slurped a mouthful. Helena was still watching her, her smile more amused now.

“Something you’d like to share?” She asked pleasantly.

“No.” Myka fiddled with the tea bag string, tugging on it. She had pulled the plastic tab back too far, tearing it halfway across the lid. She took another drink and pretended that the fire licking up beneath her skin and kindling searing hot low in her belly was caused by the heat of the day and the consumption of a hot beverage. 

Helena shuffled closer to her, practically leaning against her, her bare arm against Myka’s bare arm, and she had to know that it would be like pressing a hot brand to Myka’s flesh. 

“We should find somewhere to eat,” Helena said quietly, her head turned towards Myka. “Then you can report back to your parents that you have eaten.”

Myka tugged aggressively on the tea bag string, zipping the bag up so it hit the plastic lid repeatedly. Helena’s words had been like a bucket of cold water, and a stark reminder that Myka would eventually have to go back and face her family. “Was that necessary?” she asked. 

Helena shrugged lazily. “You have only had a banana to eat so far. We won’t be eating this meal until this evening. That is a long time to go without food.” She was still watching Myka, her head tilted to the side. She reached over and pressed the back of her knuckles against Myka’s arm. “I’d rather not lie to your parents when they inevitably ask if you have been fed.”

“Right. Right. You are right.” Myka pushed herself up from the railing, straightening up to her full height and pushing her shoulders back. She turned sharply to face Helena but looked over Helena’s shoulder to the grassy verge behind her. “We should get lunch. You’re probably hungry.”

“Clearly I have missed something.” Helena’s tone was wary. She also moved away from the railing but kept a careful distance from Myka, like she suspected that Myka might at any moment explode. 

Myka felt like she might explode at any moment. Her gut churned unpleasantly with anxiety, she could feel the pressure of panic pressing up from beneath her lungs, against her ribs and up further still into her throat. And then there was a head ache forming behind her eyes. 

Of course Helena had noticed her parents’ misplaced concern. How could Helena not have when both her mom and dad were laying it on so thick? Her mom had probably quizzed Helena on Myka’s eating habits. 

“You haven’t missed anything. You’re hungry so we will go get lunch and that means that we have to go elsewhere because unless either of us is good at foraging then we will need to go find a café or something. So let’s go!”

“Myka.” 

Myka frowned. Helena was looking at Myka’s hand, Myka’s hand that felt wet and warm. Myka looked down. She had crushed the paper cup in her fist. The lid lay by her feet and she stooped down and picked it up. 

“Should I call Pete?” Helena wondered.

“No, you shou – ”

“Do you want to call Pete?”

“No, I really don’t want to call Pete.”

“Alright,” Helena said slowly. She approached Myka cautiously. “I’m not too sure what’s going on, but if you want to talk about it then I will, of course, listen.”

“I don’t. I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Alright.” Helena nodded sharply and turned from Myka. She picked at the plastic lid of her tea. “Because if there was something to talk about.”

“There isn’t.”

“But if there was then you could tell me. That is something you could do.” She had peeled back the rim of the lid so that it was no longer fixed over the cup. 

Myka looked back over Helena’s shoulder, watched as a man threw a ball for his dog. She wasn’t very good with dog breeds. What was that? Some kind of bulldog, maybe?

“Myka.”

“It’s nothing,” Myka said quietly, looking back to Helena.

“Hardly,” Helena snorted. “Both your parents seem about ready to force feed you. I want to know why.”

“It’s stupid,” Myka mumbled. Helena shifted to face her, her mouth open, clearly about to launch into a tirade that would probably be about twenty percent concern for Myka’s well-being and eighty percent hurt indignation that Myka might be keeping something from her. “It’s actually stupid,” Myka continued ignoring the beginnings of Helena’s strop. “It was... I...” She rolled her eyes. “When I was in high school everything was planned out. Dad had pretty much picked what clubs I did; he decided what hours I did in the store and even how much free time I had.” She laughed bitterly. “He practically decided what I did in my free time. I mean if I was doing something he didn’t approve of, watching a TV show he didn’t like, then he put a stop to it.”

Helena frowned. “I don’t...” She started but Myka waved her quiet.

“I had no _control._ No control over any aspect of my life. He decided everything.” She laughed humourlessly. She stuffed the plastic lid into the crumpled cup. The anxiety roiling in her gut had turned into a storm. She could taste it at the back of her throat. She pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth.

Helena was watching her, her eyes hidden behind her sunglasses, which Myka was thankful for. She didn’t want to see the sympathy there or worse the pity. 

“And then I worked out that I could control when and what I ate.” She folded the cup over itself, pushing it inside of itself. “See, I was already missing breakfast because I was running every morning, and most evenings I had a club so I was missing dinner. Lunch was at school so they had no control over that. They trusted me to feed myself. I had this whole area of my life that was mine to control. Sometimes I skipped breakfast, sometimes I skipped lunch. I always made sure I was eating though. I just changed the routine.”

Helena looked down at the cup in her hands. “And your parents found out?”

Myka nodded. “And they freaked. They were convinced I had an eating disorder. I mean, to call it an eating disorder would be insulting to people who actually have eating disorders. But they were convinced I had one. I tried to explain but they wouldn’t listen. And so...”

“They over-reacted.”

“Yeah. That little bit of control I had was taken away. Dad decided when I ate and what I ate. God, he even contacted school so I was monitored there.”

“How did they find out?”

“I don’t know.” She had always suspected that Tracy had told them. Probably out of concern rather than out of any kind of maliciousness, but it had been another freedom taken away from her so it had been difficult not to silently begrudge Tracy for it, just another reason not to be friends with her, another thing to hold against her.

Helena was quiet. She wasn’t meeting Myka’s eyes; instead she seemed intensely focussed on the cup in her hands.

“Well?” Myka prompted. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t.” Myka blew out a breath, her smile fixing rigid and painful on her face. “Don’t... Y’know, don’t be sorry. It was dumb. It was just one thing.” One thing to add to an already large pile of so many other things that had added up to making her childhood spectacularly crap.

“Still, I am sorry.” 

Myka didn’t know what to do with that. She turned the ruined mess of what had been the cup in her hands. “Do you still want to get lunch?” She asked her voice low.

“Yes.”

Myka nodded and started in the direction of the park exit. Helena walked beside Myka silently, thinking over what Myka had just shared with her. Myka had expected her to have a great deal to say on the matter, but she seemed to be sinking into the kind of thought filled silence that she could wallow in for hours. 

“What are you thinking about?”

“Oddly enough what you just told me.” Helena turned her head towards her. “Thank you,” she said

Myka hadn’t been expecting that “For what?”

“For sharing that with me. You didn’t have to and it can’t have been easy for you.”

“You’re welcome, I guess.” Myka shrugged one shoulder. Helena was still watching her, there was a smile tugging at her mouth that was that little bit pleased, a little smug. Myka had never told anyone else about this, not even Pete, and judging by what she could see of Helena’s expression she knew this. Ordinarily she’d be annoyed by Helena’s need to possessively collect little bits of information about her that others weren’t aware of but today it just seemed inconsequential.

Myka reached down for Helena’s hand and took it in her own, threaded her fingers between Helena’s and held on. “So,” Myka said and then she cleared her throat. “Lunch then. And I suppose then we’d better head back. The point seeing family is that, y’know, we actually spend some time with them.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this fic I said to myself "I really should rewatch the episode with Tracy in." But I couldn't be bothered. When I got stuck on this chapter I decided that it was the perfect time to actually rewatch that episode. I got about twenty minutes into it before I remembered that Myka acts like a complete moron in that episode. So I stopped watching,
> 
> As you will probably be able to tell as you read this chapter, it kicked my arse. I'm still not completely happy with it but I am completely sick of the sight of it.

Helena tucked her hands in her pockets and rocked back on her heels as she looked up at the establishment they were to be dining at. It looked pleasant enough if a little over lit with garish purple lights shining up at its logo. Purple always put her in mind of the Warehouse and as a consequence she was fully expecting to smell fudge at any moment.

She sighed and resisted the urge to run her fingers through her hair. She had checked in with the Warehouse while Myka was occupied getting ready for the evening. Pete had answered with a mouthful of something or other and informed her, without swallowing the mouthful of something or other, that they’d had a ping and that Claudia and Steve were taking care of it; that Artie and Abigail were arguing about filing, and that there was no crisis that required either of their attentions. He had then swallowed, grinned and told her to enjoy the in-laws. She had been tempted to question Pete on what he knew about Myka’s eating... habits, but had refrained. Perhaps he knew nothing of it, or perhaps he knew far more than Helena did and it would be just more evidence that Myka was far more likely to share these personal titbits with Pete than with her.

Helena turned and looked back to the Bering’s who were all still hovering around the two cars that they had travelled in. The atmosphere in the car Helena had shared with Myka and her parents had been unbearable, tense with a silence heavy with unsaid words, and Helena had exited it with a quickness that bordered on rudeness. 

“All I’m saying is just because I can’t drink tonight doesn’t mean that you guys shouldn’t,” Tracy said louder than necessary. Helena was beginning to understand that Tracy often spoke in a voice that was louder than necessary, as though she needed to be the one heard over everyone else. She and Kevin had already decided that they were the designated drivers for the evening. Behind Tracy, Kevin fussed with his daughter who, for now, dozed happily in her buggy. Of course Tracy and Kevin were the exact kind of parents that brought an infant to a dinner rather than hire a baby-sitter.

At a glance they actually made for a very presentable family. Warren looked stern but smart in his suit; Jeannie clung to his arm, looking pleased as punch and wearing a nice floral print dress that had been a gift from Tracy. Tracy had made sure that everyone had known that it was a gift from her, just as she had made it clear that this whole affair was her idea and that it was her friend who owned this establishment and that she had wrangled out of said friend an “awesome” deal. Even Kevin was wearing a suit, an expensive one at that, which no doubt had been picked out by his wife, the effect was only slightly ruined by his pink-rimmed eyes and the fact that he was the kind of man that always had a sheen of sweat on his face.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to drink, just that I’m not going to drink a lot.” Myka walked next to Tracy; she flung her arms about to emphasis her words. 

It was easy to see that they were sisters in this moment. They didn’t really look that alike, but there were similarities and the more Helena saw them interacting together the more she noticed them. Both had a wide-eyed gaze and broad mouths with crooked smiles, Myka was the taller by a good few inches but both had long limbs and they both possessed the same kind of awkward grace, though Tracy definitely leaned more towards the grace than the awkward, but Helena could tell that she’d share Myka’s tendency towards flailing. It was in their shared mannerisms and speech-patterns, the way Tracy almost seemed to shadow Myka’s movements as though she were a slightly smaller version of her. She wondered if when they were small children if Tracy had followed Myka around, copied her and tried very hard to be like her older sister, until she was old enough to decide that she wanted to be a completely different person. Myka had spent so long explaining to Helena the huge differences between herself and Tracy that Helena had been completely unprepared to witness the similarities between them. 

They’d even worn similar dresses; Myka’s showing off her endlessly long legs, while Tracy used her retained pregnancy weight to her full advantage, and, goodness! Helena had to stop looking at Tracy’s breasts. It was impolite, and Myka would notice because Myka noticed everything.

“We’re not really drinkers,” Myka explained. That was true, mostly out of respect to Pete. 

Tracy rolled her eyes and huffed, apparently she had been looking forward to seeing her sister drunk. She turned to Helena and smiled. “What about you?” She asked hopefully.

“All I heard was that I have full permission to sample every whisky they have available.”

“I’m not carrying you if you get too drunk to walk,” said Myka. She gave Helena’s arm a quick squeeze and sidled up next to her.

“It will be just like Tokyo,” Helena said.

“It would be nothing like Tokyo.”

“What happened in Tokyo?” Tracy asked, laughing a little, her eyes darting between the two of them.

“Karaoke,” Helena replied seriously. And other things that Tracy didn’t need to know about.

“So nothing like Tokyo then,” Myka said.

“Did you or did you not have to carry me back to the hotel?”

Myka let out a long breath as though she was exasperated, but she was smiling. “Yes.”

“So yes, like Tokyo.” Helena smiled triumphantly. She turned to Tracy and added, “Only with less karaoke.” And she’d actually be drunk rather than under the influence of an artefact.

Tracy laughed again. “I didn’t even know you’d been to Tokyo. When we get settled you guys have so much to tell me.”

And so much more that they couldn’t.

Warren and Jeannie joined them. Warren looked grim as ever as he surveyed the entrance.

“What are we all standing around here for?” he demanded. 

And with that piece of sour grumpiness they were herded inside, Kevin bringing up the rear since he was left to steer the buggy.

/\/\/\

Once inside they were ushered to the bar to wait to be seated. The interior of the establishment also favoured purple in its decor, and Helena felt the first sliver of unease slip up her spine. It seemed that no matter where she went she would always feel the presence of the Warehouse. 

“This looks very nice.” Jeannie turned in a slow circle and looked around the room, at the tables and fixtures on the wall, up to the bland ceiling. Helena disagreed, even if it wasn’t reminding her of the Warehouse the choice of purple made it look tacky. Warren seemed to share her opinion, he grunted at the various fixtures and tables as though they were something dirty and to best be avoided.

“Tracy!” A short blonde woman with a round face rushed up to greet them, smiling that bit too brightly.

“Dee!” Tracy greeted back and returned the smile. This must be the friend and owner of the restaurant that had given them an “awesome” deal. Tracy hugged Dee but it looked a little awkward and clearly left Dee feeling flustered and uncomfortable.

“It’s nice to see you again, Kevin, and – oh – you brought Chloe.” Dee sounded both surprised and dismayed that Tracy had decided to bring her baby for this meal. She looked from Kevin to Warren and Jeannie. “Mr. and Mrs. Bering, it’s nice to see you both too.”

“And you remember Myka,” Tracy said. She flourished her hands towards Myka as though she were a prize statue she was showing off. 

“Of course.” Dee’s smile was starting to look a little forced. “I haven’t seen you in years. You moved away, didn’t you?”

“I did.” Myka’s smile looked just as forced and painful as Dee’s.

“And this is Myka’s partner, H.G.” Tracy indicated in Helena’s direction. “Or Helena, but I think she prefers H.G. for some reason.” She shrugged. “Whatever, she’s British,” she added as though tat explained everything.

Dee turned to her and gave her a wide-eyed once over. “Oh. Oh! Wow. Uh, okay.” Her gaze flickered briefly back to Myka. “I, uh, wasn’t expecting... Okay.” Her cheeks reddened.

Helena smiled widely and thrust her hand towards Dee. “Pleasure to meet you,” she said in her plumiest tone.

“Likewise,” Dee replied. Her rigid smile wavered as she took Helena’s hand and gave it a limp-wristed shake. She dropped Helena’s hand quickly and took a small step back, her discomfort now impossible to mask. Helena heard Myka suck in a sharp breath beside her.

They all stood for an unbearable awkward beat, no one quite sure what to do. Warren was scowling at the far end of the room, Jeannie was smiling but it was a thin smile with none of her usual warmth, Tracy and Dee were staring wide-eyed at one another and appeared to be having a silent conversation. Helena didn’t need to look to Myka to know that her lips would be pressed tightly together and her posture would be rigid. Kevin appeared to have shuffled away from the group, apparently the only one of them with any sense. The tension was thick and just waiting for someone to strike a match and set it all up in flames. Thankfully Chloe decided to wake up and to start whining.

Everyone let out a breath and Tracy turned to see to her daughter. Helena took the opportunity to slip away and retreat to the bar to order the first whisky of the night. Myka followed her. She leaned back against the bar and rested her elbows on the bar top as she surveyed her family. 

“So?” she prompted.

“So ..?” Helena repeated unsure what Myka wanted from her.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Helena stared at her. Wasn’t so bad? That had been near unbearable! And it was only likely to get worse. She looked back to the group, Dee was still there looking much more relaxed now that Helena and Myka were no longer present. She was cooing over Chloe who was in Tracy’s arms, while Tracy smiled brightly and seemed to be telling a riveting story that had her parents nodding along and smiling. 

Helena sighed. “I suppose not,” she allowed. It probably could have been worse. She wasn’t sure how, but no doubt as the evening progressed things would decline.

“I remember Dee from High School,” Myka said. “She was one of - well, obviously she was one of Tracy’s friends, but Tracy had loads of friends. She was really popular. It was like there was a hierarchy to her friends.” She chuckled and shook her head. “She had two best friends who she fell out with at least once a week.”

“Of course she did. That makes perfect sense,” Helena muttered. The bar tender arrived with her whisky and she motioned for him to bring another. Myka already looked as though she could do with a stiff drink.

“And then she had friends who she wasn’t as close with but who were still part of the inner circle. Then ones that weren’t quite part of the inner circle but would still sometimes get invited to sleepovers or whatever else she was planning. And then...”

“There’s more?”

Myka laughed. “And then there were those who were outside all this but somehow still friends. The kind of friends she only really bothered with if she needed something from them. Dee was one of these.”

Helena nodded. She could see that, could easily imagine Dee trailing along behind Tracy, desperate to be noticed and agreeing to Tracy’s every whim.

“This is going to sound awful but I don’t think that Dee has ever had an original thought. She was always agreeing with whatever anyone else was saying, even if what she was agreeing with contradicted something she was agreeing with, like, five minutes ago.”

The bartender finally returned with the second whisky, Helena accepted it, paid for it and returned the flirty smile he gave her. She held it out towards Myka but Myka waved her hand dismissively.

“I don’t want one.”

“Alright. Both for me then.” She sipped her drink and watched as the Berings’ and Dee passed Chloe around like an increasingly fussy parcel.

“The thing with Dee was that because she was always agreeing with what people were saying it meant that she was agreeing with what people were saying about me.”

Helena tensed. She could already tell by Myka’s tone that she wasn’t going to like this. “And what did they used to say about you?”

“Nothing really awful. I mean...” She exhaled. “I wasn’t bullied. I want to make that clear, I was not bullied. But people said things and not good things either. About my hair, the clothes I was wearing, y’know, stupid things.”

“And Dee was one of these people.” Helena rotated the glass in her hand and watched the whisky swirl. She was developing a strong dislike for this Dee. She looked up to Myka. “And what of Tracy, where was she during all this?”

Myka made a face.

“I see,” Helena said. “Tracy was also amongst these individuals.”

Myka cringed. “That sounds awful. I don’t want to give you a bad impression of Tracy. She never said anything to my face at school, plenty of things to my face at home but then I said awful things to her as well, we fought a lot. But, y’know, you had a brother, I bet you guys fought.”

Helena dipped her head in acknowledgement. She and Charles had indeed fought, and almost constantly, about stupid frivolous things. They had taken an almost perverse pleasure in goading one another. But beneath that bickering they had loved each other. Sometimes it had felt like their bickering was an odd way of expressing that love. She was sure that it was the same for Myka and her sister.

Myka laughed. “I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say. It’s just – it’s weird, y’know, seeing people from school.”

“I can imagine.”

“It’s weird being back. It always is.” She spoke softly at first but as she continued she grew louder. “I didn’t know what to say to her. I haven’t seen her in so long and honestly I haven’t thought about her at all. And suddenly – whup! – there she is and she’s been living her life.”

“Yes, people tend to do that.”

“You know what I mean.” Helena did know what Myka meant. Figures from the past so often remained in static, frozen in time with how you remembered them. It must have been strange to see Dee, so different to the one that Myka remembered. Perhaps for Myka with her perfect memory it was worse. Myka sighed. “What if she had asked me about my life? What would I have told her?”

“You could have rubbed your success in her face.”

“You know one of the many, many, problems with working at the Warehouse is that from an outside perspective I don’t actually look that successful.”

“You are a Secret Service agent.”

“In South Dakota.”

“Is that not successful enough?”

Apparently it was not. Myka scratched at the back of her head. Her bottom lip pressed up into her top, the corners of her mouth pulling down in a way that was reminiscent of her father. “When I look at Dee all I can see is her standing in the hall at school with her friends laughing at something that’s been said about me. I’m having a hard time reconciling the Dee I knew with Dee the restaurant owner. And given how she reacted just before, I’m pretty sure when she looks at me she doesn’t see my successes, not that she even knows about them, she just sees me as I was: nerdy and gangly, with big glasses and out of control hair.”

“You paint such a charming picture of yourself,” Helena murmured. Myka’s propensity for underselling herself was clearly in full force tonight. “Perhaps she is feeling the same incongruence that you are.”

“No. No, I really don’t think that she is.”

“Well what does it matter?” Helena demanded, frustrated. “Who cares what this woman who you haven’t seen, or indeed even thought about, in years thinks? You know your own successes. You know what you have made of your own life.”

Myka turned to Helena, scowling. She opened her mouth, paused, closed it and then slumped back against the bar. “I’m being stupid again, aren’t I?”

She absolutely was, but Helena could never voice that thought. She glanced down at her drink in hand, lips pursed. She understood why Myka allowed her father to get under her skin, how a figure like that in her life had the power to either undermine her or to raise her up with a casual word, but she did not understand why Myka would allow this nobody of a woman get to her. 

“It’s just that.” Myka blew out a long shaky breath. “I don’t need recognition for my work. I don’t need a pat on the back or any kind of commendation. But sometimes it’s frustrating that I can’t talk about it. When my parents or Tracy ask me about work I give the same boring reply, works fine. No details of what I do, nothing.”

Helena could understand that feeling. When she had been at Twelve she had not needed the recognition either, not usually. More often she enjoyed that she was in on this secret, enjoyed that it elevated her above so many others. It had been a childish feeling, but she had revelled in it nonetheless.

“I just... I feel like I’m...” she shrugged. “I don’t know. I really am being stupid.”

“Hardly.” Helena followed Myka’s gaze over the room. Her family were huddled together, Chloe now in Warren’s arms while they chatted. They looked happy, their smiles bright and their demeanour relaxed. His granddaughter seemed to have a soothing effect on Warren; the steel rigidity of his posture had melted away, and the small smile he wore took years off of him. Tracy said something, her hands flapping before her and everyone laughed. Helena turned back to Myka. She looked over her family with a wistful, sad smile. 

Helena ran her thumb around the lip of her glass. She did not know how to ease the tension that Myka was feeling. Even if it had been allowed when Helena was an agent at Warehouse 12 she would not have shared her life there with Charles. As close as she had been to him she had wanted to keep her true life secret. Not to protect him, but just so that she had something that was her own, something that she did not have to share. She had never felt this disconnect that Myka was feeling. But she had lived with Charles and had seen him constantly whereas Myka rarely saw her family. Standing here across the room from them Myka was clearly feeling the distance more than ever and Helena didn’t know how to even begin to bridge it.

The silence between them stretched on as she watched Myka. It was not an uncomfortable silence but it was one clearly waiting to be filled. She let her eyes wander over Myka’s profile, taking in the way her eyes flickered over her family, her gaze softening, and the beginnings of a small smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth even as her brow furrowed slightly. 

Helena clutched her glass tightly in one hand. She licked her lips and leaned closer to Myka. “You look very beautiful tonight,” she murmured softly.

Confusion flashed briefly in Myka’s eyes and then her mouth slowly stretched into a brilliant wonderfully crooked smile. She turned to Helena, eyes bright and the faintest tinge of pink dusting her cheeks. “Just tonight?” she teased.

“Always,” Helena said quietly, fiercely.

Myka’s nose wrinkled as she laughed. “How many of those have you had?”

“I haven’t even finished my first,” Helena replied feeling marginally offended. She certainly didn’t need the influence of alcohol to compliment Myka. If she thought that Myka were amendable to it she would tell her how beautiful she was every second of every day. That would probably get quite irritating quite quickly. 

Myka shook her head, still laughing. “You pick the weirdest times to say these things to me.”

Helena shrugged and sipped her drink. “I don’t think there is a strange time to pay a lady a compliment.”

“Pretty sure there is and that this qualified.” Despite her protestations she was smiling. She bit her lip and cast Helena a sidelong glance. Apparently emboldened by weirdly out of the blue compliments Myka sidled up close to Helena. She reached over and plucked at Helena’s sleeve. “Sorry,” she said quietly.

“For what?” Helena turned her head to face Myka. She was looking down at her hand where her fingers continued to pluck and stroke the sleeve of Helena’s shirt. Her brow was furrowed and there was still a tightness to her mouth that Helena didn’t like at all. She shrugged. “For being a downer I guess.”

“You don’t have to apologise to me for that. Certainly not for expressing how you feel to me.”

Myka looked up at her, a sardonic smile twisting her lips. “This evening was always going to be pretty miserable and I just brought it down a notch.”

“Myka.” Helena set her drink on the bar top and turned towards Myka. She opened her mouth ready to reassure Myka, but as was so often the case with Myka no words came to her. She should have told Myka the obvious, that she had made her own family amongst the Warehouse, that if she truly wanted to bridge this distance between herself and her blood family then Helena would support her. She might not be able to share her full life at the Warehouse with Tracy or her parents, but she could still be a part of theirs. All the things she could have said to Myka lay scattered in her mind like discarded tools. She couldn’t think of the one right thing to say so she didn’t say anything at all. She exhaled and hoped that Myka would be able to read her silence. She fumbled for Myka’s hand, the one that had been so busy pulling at her sleeve, captured it in her dry grasp, and brought it to her mouth. She kissed the back of Myka’s fingers once, saw the beginnings of a smile at Myka’s lips and repeated the gesture. Myka exhaled a laugh and shook her head. No doubt she had found the gesture just as out of the blue as the compliment earlier, but she was smiling again now so it was worth it. 

The sound of a throat being cleared very pointedly made them both look up. Tracy raised her eyebrows at them, smiling. “Sorry to interrupt you little love fest, but the table is ready.” Helena and Myka exchanged a glance. If there had been an opportunity to escape then they had missed it. Tracy clapped her hands together impatiently. “Come on, move your butts guys!” She spun on her heel and marched back towards her husband and child.

Sighing, Helena picked up her first glass of whisky and downed it in two gulps. She picked up her second glass.

“You really it meant it about sampling all they have on offer, huh?”

“They have a poor selection.” Helena followed after Myka. “But I’m sure that I’ll endure.”

“I’m sure you will.”

/\/\/\

There was some confusion as to where they were supposed to be sitting. 

They hovered around the table, unsure, circling it like wary predators set upon wounded prey that was still capable of defending itself. They pulled chairs out and made to sit down, reconsidered, put the chair back and moved on to the next one only to repeat the process. They stepped into each other’s spaces, onto each other’s toes and muttered apologies. Warren scowled. Jeannie sighed with her hand pressed against her cheek. Kevin followed Tracy’s directions with a calm sureness that suggested he was a man well used to having his wife direct every aspect of his life. Myka stretched her neck out and glared up at the ceiling. Helena stepped back from the throng as it was getting too claustrophobic for her liking and assessed the restaurant for the nearest possible exit. It couldn’t possibly be too late for her to make an escape.

“Right!” Tracy clapped her hands together. “Mom, Dad, you guys sit here. Myka go there, H.G. – Helena – whatever, you sit there. Kevin here and myself here; this way Kevin and I can have Chloe close by.”

Everyone sat where Tracy had indicated. She looked supremely pleased with herself. She turned to her right to where her father was sat, inspecting the cutlery with a critical eye. Her head whipped to the left so hard and fast that Helena winced.

“Kevin,” she hissed. “Swap places with me.”

Without a single question he stood up and calmly moved to the middle seat and waited patiently while Tracy shuffled across to his previous seat. He sat down and glanced to his right to Warren’s sour countenance and then turned to Helena his eyes wide in mute appeal.

It was quite clever, in a low way that Helena could easily appreciate. Tracy had configured the seating arrangement so that she and Myka were sat opposite one another at one end of the table; Warren and Jeannie opposite each other at the other end; Kevin and herself were in the middle, acting as a buffer between parents and children.

Helena looked down at Warren and Jeannie and then turned her attention up the table to Myka and Tracy. Tracy hadn’t just placed herself at the opposite end of the table from her father she had also made sure that she was out of his line of site. Unfortunately this meant that Myka was directly in Warren’s crosshairs. Helena silently cursed herself. She should have thought of that.

She picked up her glass and tipped the remnants of her second whisky down her throat. Kevin watched her and sighed like a dying man in the desert watching the last of the water be drained away.

The waiter appeared at the table in that way only waiters knew how, as though he had materialised out of thin air. Perhaps in her free time – if such a thing existed for her – Mrs. Frederic’s offered lessons. He smiled widely at them. “Hi, I’m Clark and I’ll be your waiter for the evening.”

He was awfully young, handsome in that gawky just out of his adolescence way, with too many freckles and tousled sandy hair. The bridge of his nose had a shiny, pink patch that suggested the skin there had peeled recently; his cheeks too looked a little pink beneath his smattering of freckles. She could easily sympathise with catching the sun; the skin on her shoulders and the back of her neck felt warm and uncomfortably tight.

She took the menu he offered her and smiled, meeting his eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

Myka stiffened in her seat.

“Can I get any of you folks a drink?” Clark asked which set nearly everyone to frantically turning the pages of their menus to inspect the drink selection. Clark took their distraction as an opportunity to gawp at Tracy’s breasts.

Helena leaned forward and touched the rim of her glass with a single finger. “I would like another of these, Clark.”

He tore his gaze away from Tracy’s cleavage and grinned at her. “Single malt, right? What brand?” 

“Surprise me,” she said with a small grin.

“I got you covered.” He pointed his finger at her and leaned back, as though his finger was a gun and he a cowboy shooting from the hip. The gesture reminded her of Pete and that took some of the wind out of her sails.

Everyone else managed to make their decisions fairly quickly, and Clark took their orders with the same polite swagger he had shown Helena. No one else got the shoot from the hip gesture though. He left with their orders, another smile for Helena, and a lingering gaze down Tracy’s dress, a skip to his step.

“Stop it,” Myka said quietly once the waiter had departed.

“Stop what?”

“You know what.”

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

Myka squinted suspiciously at her. Her lips pressed tightly together in a thin line, the colour fleeing from them. 

Helena rubbed her hand along her thigh nervously. 

“You’re going to torment the waiter,” Myka accused her. 

“I was going to do no such thing. I was merely being polite.” It could almost have been a playful exchange, they had, in past, had such exchanges, where Helena had teased someone and Myka had frowned and pretended to be annoyed but been unable to hide her smile. This wasn’t like those times; Myka appeared to be genuinely annoyed. Helena licked her lips, watched as Myka’s eyes flitted down to her lips and back up. She forced a smile; perhaps she could turn this into one of those games. She leaned in closer and murmured, “I was merely going to vastly improve his evening. Perhaps make him blush a little.”

Myka’s eyes narrowed. Helena fought down the urge to swallow and lean back. Anxiety was starting to crawl its way up her throat. Hidden from view by the table her fingers fidgeted together. Myka was still unmoved. She might have badly misjudged this. 

“What’s going on?” Tracy asked. “We’ve only been here ten minutes. You guys already having a fight?”

“No. We’re not.” Myka kept her eyes on Helena; her gaze lost some of its steel and was replaced calm sureness, as though she had suddenly cottoned on to the game that Helena was attempting to play. Helena wanted to squirm under that look, to move away, to move closer, to just move and fidget and burrow closer to Myka. She didn’t though. She remained still, keeping her mask of feigned innocence as her heart jumped at each minute movement of Myka’s arching brow.

“Oh,” Tracy said and then laughed. “I see how it is.”

Myka turned to Tracy. “See how what is?”

“Just... just this, this little game.” Tracy waved her finger back and forth between Helena and Myka and smirked.

“There is no game,” Myka said quickly. Tracy raised her eyebrows and smiled at Myka, clearly not believing her.

The waiter was making his way back, still with a spring to his step, and his smile now cocky rather than just confident, his hair looking ever more tousled.

Deciding to push her luck, Helena leaned closer to Myka and murmured in her ear, “Perhaps I’ll give him the cold shoulder? Leave him feeling terribly confused.”

“That would be cruel.”

“And we wouldn’t want that. Perhaps then I shall just pick up where I left off.” She leant back in her seat, preparing to smile at the waiter.

“Your drinks,” Clark announced unnecessarily. 

Helena opened her mouth to thank him but only managed to emit a small squeak. Her mouth snapped shut. Myka had curled her hand around her thigh, fingers pressing hard enough into the sensitive flesh to almost hurt. Helena swallowed and sat back.

Myka had a jealous streak, Helena knew this, and it had been. She had known that she would be able to get a rise out of Myka by indulging in a little harmless flirting with this boy and that if she prodded Myka along just right then she could count on Myka banking her frustrations and then taking them out on Helena once they were home. Myka could be wonderfully aggressive when handled right.

Myka’s fingers flexed and Helena sucked in a breath. She turned to Myka and found herself caught in Myka’s gaze, in the burn of it. Myka’s eyes dragged down to Helena’s lips and she inhaled, long and slow, her chest rising, before looking back to Helena’s eyes. There was intent there. Like she was considering seizing Helena’s face in her hands kissing her in a gloriously possessive display. Helena willed her to do it. Myka pressed her fingers harder to Helena’s thigh, the material of her trousers rubbing against her skin. She moved her hand that little bit higher, not high enough, and Helena’s breathing stuttered. 

Myka turned her head and smiled politely at the waiter. “Thank you,” she said with crisp pleasantness as he put her drink down. She kept her grip on Helena’s thigh and strangled any words that Helena might have offered the waiter for her own drink. Once he turned from the table Myka released Helena’s thigh.

“A little blunt, a little heavy handed perhaps, but well played,” Helena said quietly. Her hands were shaking and her heart rattled around inside her ribs.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Myka replied. She picked her drink up and sipped it, the very picture of nonchalance. But Helena didn’t miss the way her other hand went to palm her neck.

“Oh, I can’t decide what to have,” Jeannie fretted. Helena jumped. She had forgotten that Jeannie and Warren were here, briefly, that even Kevin and Tracy were also here. But, oh yes, she was at a Berings’ family dinner. How disappointing.

She glanced down at her own menu. She hadn’t even opened it, hadn’t even picked it up yes. Her fingers were uncooperative as she tried to pry it from the table top. Her heart was jumping in little spasms; she felt as though she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been doing and that now all eyes were on her in anticipation of her making a mistake. Or just in her failing to open the damned menu. Slowly she managed to prise the menu open and gave it a cursory glance. 

“Are we having a starter?” Jeannie asked. She looked up over the top of her menu at her husband. Apparently they were both oblivious as to Myka and her exchange. Tracy wasn’t, she was staring at them both, her eyes goggling and her mouth open.

“Of course we are,” Warren replied.

“I don’t think I want a starter,” Myka said. She turned the page on the menu and regarded it with pursed lips. 

“Of course you do. We’re all having a starter. You’re having a starter.” He sounded fairly reasonable, his tone almost pleasant, but Helena could hear the hard edge beneath it. His small, beetle black eyes bore down on Myka. The corners of his mouth were pulled down again, his brow marred with lines. Perhaps he was concerned, but his expression and the hard set of his shoulders showed only disapproval.

“Okay, guess I’m having a starter,” Myka muttered under her breath. She rolled her shoulder back and her head twitched as she scrutinised the menu.

“Good.” Warren nodded his approval and returned his focus to his own menu.

Helena clutched her own menu tight enough that her hands ached. She had promised Myka that she would behave, that she wouldn’t start any fights with Warren, but it was awfully tempting right now to start one. She glanced once more over the selection; there was an option to have a starter to share, it cost a little more but it wasn’t an extravagance. 

“What if we had one to share?” She suggested glancing over to Myka. Myka looked a little surprised, but she smiled.

“Alright. What do you want?”

Helena’s eyes were immediately drawn to the oysters on the half-shell, but that was probably not the most appropriate meal to share when Myka’s parents were present. 

“What’s the point in that?” Warren closed his menu and placed it gently down on the table top. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table, his fingers folding together. “There’s next to nothing to a starter. You might as well have one each.”

“I don’t have a large appetite,” Helena said in what she thought was a fairly cordial tone. “And your portions here do tend to be on the large side. I wouldn’t want to ruin my appetite.” 

“You won’t.”

“I might.” Warren’s attitude had already ruined her appetite.

“It’ll cost more.” He hunched his shoulders up and resettled in his seat causing the table to wobble. “They charge nearly twice as much for the sharers and you can bet that won’t be reflected in the food on your plate.” His lips stretched into a thin smirk. 

He was probably right, but Helena would be damned before she admitted that to him, especially when he wasn’t even the one paying for the meal. “Is money an issue?”

“Not at all.”

“Then I don’t see the problem with Myka and I having a starter to share.” She held Warren’s gaze. He slid his fingers across his palms as he regarded her. She turned from him; she wasn’t going to get caught up in some childish staring contest. Her shoulders were prickling but she resisted the urge to shrug or to touch them in any way. She could feel Warren watching her just as she could feel the tight tension filled silence of the table fall over them, thinning the air.

“Myka needs to eat.” His voice was soft, but Helena felt it like the crack of a whip. She heard the accusation there – that she didn’t care.

“And she shall.” She fought to stop her voice from rising, hated that there was a quiver to it, that the quiver might be mistaken for brittleness when it was from her efforts to not sound shrill.

“She’s having a starter,” Warren reaffirmed just as softly, just as resolutely. 

“God! Fine! I’ll have the stuffed mushrooms.” Myka dropped her menu to the table and slumped back in her seat.

“There, that’s better.” Warren smiled and lowered himself back in his seat, looking smug. He lifted his menu and opened it carefully, as though it were fragile and might break if he exerted any force.

Helena exhaled slowly and pressed her thumb against the sharp edge of the menu. It was hardback, faux leather with plastic gold coloured corner tips. She pressed the menu between her thumb and fingers, trying to bend it. She couldn’t. She closed it and knew that she wouldn’t even be able to bend it over her knee like this. She ran her thumb back up its sharp edge as she tested the weight of it in both hands. Tracy was turned away and occupied with her daughter, probably attempting to ignore the minor fracas that had just occurred. Kevin was similarly engrossed in his menu. Helena kept her head still but slid her gaze over to Warren. He was reading his menu, his head tilted back as he peered down his nose through his glasses, one brow raised and his mouth open. The skin on his neck was starting to thin in his age, it was loose and papery. He would have skin flaps from his neck to chin soon, the skinny man’s jowls. She could see his pulse point, the steady beat of it beneath his slack skin.

She inhaled though her nose and held the breath as she slowly placed the menu flat on the table top and placed her hands flat down on top of it, her fingers flaring outwards like a fan. She exhaled through her lips and looked up. Kevin was watching her with wide eyes. He shook his head minutely, as though he knew exactly what she was thinking and was warning her against it. She picked up her drink and downed half of it in a single gulp. The burn of it did nothing to quench the anger quivering in her gut.

“Don’t. Don’t get drunk,” Myka whispered.

“I refuse to stay sober,” Helena muttered.

Myka sighed. “Please?”

“Fine.” It would be better if Myka were to join her in getting properly inebriated. That might help to make this entire weekend tolerable.

“I think I’ll have the fried brie wedges,” Jeannie announced happily, utterly oblivious to what was going on around her.

/\/\/\

Conversation, such as it had been, dried up with the arrival of their starters. Helena listened to the discordant rhythm of knives and forks clattering against plates. Warren was especially noisy. He sawed enthusiastically into his food and then spent time gathering as much as he possibly could onto his fork, scraping his knife through salad and relish and whatever else was on his plate until he couldn’t possibly fit another bite on there and then shovelled it into his mouth. Both he and Kevin shared a habit of smacking their lips while they ate; it was the only similarity between them that Helena had thus far noticed. 

There were very few other guests dining this evening, a young couple that seemed more engrossed with the table then each other; and a small group of older friends tabled off to the far side, one of whom, occasionally bellowed a laugh so loud that it drowned all other voices in the room. From what Helena had gathered from Warren and Jeannie’s shared murmurings they were associates, and that Warren would much rather be dining with them than with his family. 

The other diners were all sat as far away from the Berings’ table as the room would allow. She suspected that the other diners were sat so far away to spare them if Chloe were to wake and start crying.

Ordering the meal and been an ordeal. Jeannie had changed her mind several times over, Tracy had made a quick decision for herself and Kevin only to change her mind at the last minute and send the waiter scurrying off while she once more poured over the menu. Nothing on the menu had been to Warren’s satisfaction. He had harangued the waiter over the poor selection on offer and then quibbled over each individual item. By the time he had made his choice young Clark’s hair had lost its artful tousle and was sticking up at odd angles from where he had ran his fingers through it repeatedly. Myka’s decision was made with zero enthusiasm and Helena was sure she’d just picked the first option her eyes had landed on.

With little enthusiasm Helena pushed her last mushroom around the plate with her fork. She had opted to have the same as Myka, three stuffed Portobello mushrooms, with goats’ cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, served with a limp side salad that had far too much dressing and was too vinegary to eat. The mushrooms had been greasy with a rubbery texture; the goats’ cheese filling sloppy with lumps; she had yet to find a sun-dried tomato. She had managed to force down two of the repulsive things so far and was struggling with the third. 

Myka seemed more engrossed with playing with her food around the plate than eating it. Helena didn’t think that she had seen Myka eat more than two bites. Instead she had cut the food up, mixed it together, and continued to poke at it as though the action might mask the fact that she was not eating. 

Helena stabbed at her mushroom with her fork but the tines just slid off its rubbery exterior. She herded it around grease and goats’ cheese spillages, ran it over damp, sad salad, and nearly flipped it off the plate entirely as she tried to catch it. She didn’t even want it, but she wasn’t going to be defeated by a badly cooked fungus. She doubted that Jeannie’s brie wedges were fighting back. Warren’s shrimp had probably leapt into his mouth. Perhaps she should have followed Myka’s example and savaged it. Salad and mushroom mulch would no doubt be easier to eat and she doubted that it could adversely affect the taste of something that was so horrible to begin with.

She glanced once more to Myka and watched as she continued to prod sulkily at her meal. She was trying to think of every meal she had ever shared with Myka, to bring to mind her eating habits. Her plate was usually clear by the end of meals, she was certain of that. She was less certain if that was because Pete had decided to help himself and had cleared the plate for Myka.

She stabbed again at the mushroom and this time was successful. She watched with little satisfaction as the filling oozed from it. 

She was being ridiculous. Myka had shared something with her, something personal, and she had let it settle in her like a poison that was spreading through her veins. She had to stop thinking on this. Where would it end? Would she watch Myka like a hawk while she ate? Catalogue every item of food that passed her lips? Perhaps she would take it a step further and not just count the food but carefully make notes on the nutritional information and draw up a guide for what Myka could and could not eat. Would she truly allow herself to become obsessed over this? Absurd! She would be no better than Warren.

She sawed into the mushroom; its filling spilled out from its split centre. She quartered it and ate the piece she still had skewered on the end of her fork. She chewed it furiously and swallowed it down with a grimace. If Myka did not want to eat her starter then Helena could hardly blame her. It was disgusting. The lack of people in this establishment was clearly down to the low quality of food. The so called “awesome deal” that Tracy had wrangled evidently had less to do with either Tracy’s ability at haggling or even a gesture of friendship, and was more a move of desperation on behalf of the owner. 

Helena carefully placed her knife and fork down on the plate signifying that she was finished. Everyone else was finishing as well. Warren, Jeannie and Kevin had cleared their plates and were all nodding their heads and murmuring that they had enjoyed it. Tracy had left a little of hers and was looking down at her plate in puzzlement, as though she couldn’t decide if she had liked it or not. Myka gave the mashed up mess on her plate one last miserable poke with her fork and then gently placed it down.

Myka was turned away from them, just the slightest tilt of her body and the barest raise of her shoulder, her head down. She was attempting to block out her father, but her efforts meant that Helena was also left on the outside of this little wall she had erected. 

Clark reappeared to clear their plates and enquire after their meal, smiling while everyone mumbled what Helena hoped were lies that it was good. 

“We should get a bottle of wine,” Jeannie said, beaming up at her family as though the past fifteen minutes hadn’t just been stiff with awkwardness. “Warren?”

He grunted. He was staring at Myka, his eyes hard. No doubt he had noticed how little Myka had eaten of her starter. His hand was curled into a loose fist resting atop the table. His thumb slowly brushed side to side across his finger. Helena couldn’t hear the smooth scrape of the pad of his thumb across his finger over the quiet hum of noise that hung in the restaurant, but she could imagine it. 

“I was thinking that we should get a bottle of wine.” Jeannie reached across the table and placed her hand over Warren’s. “Warren.”

Slowly he looked down to his wife’s hand covering his own. He started nodding his head, little bobs like a chicken. “Wine. That sounds like a good idea.” He smiled thinly. “Since Tracy isn’t drinking we’ll be able to have red.” From another parent it might have sounded like an affectionate jab, Warren’s tone was laced with derision.

“H.G. might like white.” Tracy looked to Helena hopefully.

“I prefer red.” Stupidly she felt guilty for not agreeing with Tracy, as though she had somehow betrayed her. Why did every conversation feel as though the participants were trying to gain points?

“Of course you do,” Tracy muttered and slumped back in her seat.

“Then it’s decided.” Warren clicked his fingers to attract the waiter’s attention. Clark hopped up looking just as exuberant as he had earlier, his hair impossibly more tousled, and took Warren’s order of two bottles of the house merlot and bounced off again. Neither Warren nor Jeannie had seen fit to ask either Myka or Helena if they even wanted wine. It seemed that Myka’s parents just expected Myka to go along with whatever they suggested. Myka’s silence did little to disabuse them of this notion.

“Myka,” Warren said in a low voice. He didn’t look at his daughter; instead he focussed on the knife he held between his fingers, slowly turning it over. He looked uncomfortable, shifting in his seat, his shoulders stiff.

Helena tensed. A feeling of dread settled on her shoulders. She could already tell what this was going to be about. Helena shouldn’t have eaten so much of her own starter. She had considered childishly refusing to eat it at all. Perhaps then she might have drawn Warren’s scathing attention to herself and spared Myka his scrutiny. But then she might have only made things worse.

Myka turned slowly to face her father. Her shoulders were still high, still rigid, but her head hung low with the awful weight of inevitability. 

“Hey, H.G.,” Tracy said suddenly, loud enough that everyone at the table jumped, knees and arms knocking against the table. She leaned forward causing the table to rock more. “I’ve been wondering which do you prefer: H.G. or Helena?”

Everyone stared at Tracy in wide-eyed silence. She was leaning so far over the table that she must have been out of her seat. Slowly, as though dazed by her question, all eyes turned towards Helena.

“I uh...” She had no idea what to say. Next to her she felt Myka sag down in her seat, her breath sighing out in relief. Kevin was watching her with quiet interest. Jeannie was similar but with curious warmth. Warren looked confused; he settled back in his seat, frowning, clearly not used to being interrupted, especially by his daughters.

“Hmm?” Tracy hummed just as loudly. Her eyes were comically wide with interest and leaned that bit further more over the table.

Helena resisted the urge to squirm beneath their gazes, hating the way that she was suddenly and without any kind of warning the focus of their attention. She didn’t mind being the centre of attention, once she had revelled in it, but always when it was a situation of her own making. She felt as though she was on display, a specimen waiting to be dissected in front of a crowd.

She cleared her throat delicately. “I don’t actually mind. I am okay with either.” 

Tracy didn’t seem at all appeased by this. She squinted at Helena and leaned even further over the table, like she might if given sufficient reason climb over it and seize Helena by her shirt and shake the answer she wanted from her. “Most simply call me H.G.,” Helena added quickly. “It is actually only really Myka who calls me Helena.” And Artie, and occasionally Pete, but that was when he was being unusually serious and was usually in conjunction with her doing something he perceived as wrong. 

Tracy swivelled her head towards Myka.

“Because it’s her name,” Myka said before Tracy could even open her mouth.

Tracy smiled toothily. She let out an amused snort and slipped back into her seat. “No need to sound so defensive.”

“I didn’t.” She returned Tracy’s smile and Helena felt herself relax. She didn’t completely understand what this little exchange between Tracy and Myka was, but she could see that it had calmed Myka considerably. The rigidity of her shoulders had slackened and she leaned back in her seat, not the petulant slump of earlier but with easy comfort. She gave her head a little shake, her smile growing wider. 

Helena didn’t know what to make of Tracy. Myka had of course spoken of her, of their tumultuous childhood relationship and the distance that had grown between them as adults. She sounded regretful that there was distance between them, but she could never quite dispel the resentment from her voice when she spoke of her sister, who had been the favourite child, who could do no wrong in their father’s eye. But nor could she hide the hint of sibling pride and affection when she spoke of Tracy’s accomplishments.

Tracy seemed to flit from being supportive to disparaging without any warning. Helena had watched as Tracy had made careless offhand cutting comments to Myka, usually criticizing her clothes or her hair, had seen how it had actually hurt Myka; but she had also witnessed moments like these, where Tracy had stepped in to deflect Warren’s negativity from Myka.

“Don’t you think you’re a bit old to be going by a nickname?” Warren said mildly. 

Helena tensed her posture so rigid that it felt as though her spine had just been replaced with a steel girder. “Of course not. It’s not as though it is something ridiculous.”

“It’s a little ridiculous,” Warren scoffed.

“They’re really your initials?” Kevin’s eyes lit up and he gawped at her in amazement. “And ‘Wells’ is really your surname?”

“Of course it is,” she sputtered indignantly. Had they assumed that she had changed her name for effect? That she was some rabid fan who had changed to her name to show her devotion. 

It was as though she had given the order for attack, as soon as she had finished speaking she was assaulted from all sides, a barrage of polite enquiries, invasive questions and curious demands, and no sooner had she begun to answer one then the next was fired at her. What did the “G” stand for? Had her parents deliberately picked names that would match the initials? Did they think that was _funny?_

This was why Emily Lake had been such a perfect moniker for her to assume. It was such a boring, mundane name. No one was interested in Emily Lake. Her own name drew far too much attention. Emily Lake was an unremarkable name for an unremarkable woman who was easily forgotten.

“Alright enough,” Myka cut in sharply. She didn’t shout, had only raised her voice enough to be heard over her family’s babble, but they all reacted to the commanding tone. 

Helena slumped back in her seat. Her shoulders and neck prickled with the familiar sun kissed heat, but another kind of heat was working its way under her skin. She wondered if Myka even realised the particular tone she had just used. She knew the effect it could have on Helena, she had used it enough times to get what she wanted. To hear it used here, employed against her family was strange and oddly ... exciting. Helena tamped down on the smile that threatened to split her face. 

“We were only asking a few questions. We hardly know anything about Helena,” Jeannie said calmly.

“You were interrogating her,” Myka replied sternly. Helena squirmed in her seat.

“We’re interested,” Jeannie said just as Tracy laughed, “Maybe because you’re guarding her like she’s a state secret. If I hadn’t met her I would think that you were making her up.”

“What?” Myka’s head snapped round to Tracy.

Tracy shrugged lazily and rolled her eyes. “I mean come on, H.G. Wells? It’s a little too perfect.” She turned her attention to Helena, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “She didn’t order you online, did she?”

“What the hell?” Myka shrieked making Helena jump. Myka didn’t shriek often, became loud and garbled her words, yes, yelled and stuttered, yes, but rarely did she sound so high pitched and frankly... girly. Helena continued to squirm in her seat.

“No?” Helena said.

“You don’t sound very convincing.”

“Why do you sound so unsure?” Myka demanded.

“Why do you sound so excited?”

“I don’t.”

“Worked up then.”

“I’m not.” Helena could only marvel at the way one of Myka’s eyes ogled while the other managed to maintain an irritated squint.

“You know,” Jeannie said patting Helena’s hand clumsily. “H.G. Wells is Warren’s favourite author.”

“Yes, I had surmised as much.” Why else would he have read her works to Myka? The only way he had ever managed to show Myka that he loved her was through sharing something he loved with her. What a strange weight for the three of them to carry between them, for Warren to not even know the seed he had planted when he had first read _War of the Worlds_ to his daughter. What a strange and terrible thing, to despise Warren for all the ways in which he failed Myka but to forever be in his debt for those small acts of love.

“Your parents must have loved H.G. Wells’ books just as much,” Jeannie continued.

Helena laughed weakly. “I think the reference was rather lost on them. They were not, shall we say, literary types.”

“So your name is a coincidence?” Warren looked less than impressed.

“If it had been done on purpose then I am certain that my brother would have been the one graced with the famous initials.”

“You have a brother?” Jeannie sounded delighted.

 _“Really?”_ Myka hissed under her breath. They had decided before coming here that Helena would tell Myka’s family as little as possible about herself, about her past. She was to remain an enigma. Myka didn’t want Helena to lie; she didn’t want to have to lie any more than she would have to her family. Helena could understand that, but she also understood that when she was incapable of telling them the truth of her life, even a shadow of it, then she would have no choice but to fabricate certain aspects. The mention of Charles was not a lie, merely a complication.

“Had,” Helena corrected quickly. “I’m afraid that he passed away quite some time ago. The same is true for my parents.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Jeannie sounded sincere and there was a general murmuring of sympathies from around the table. “Any other family.”

Helena paused, Christina’s name was heavy on her tongue but she shut her mouth and shook her head. “Just me, I’m afraid.” Her hand slipped under her shirt and searched across her collarbone. She had left her locket at home though, which was unusual, she rarely went anywhere without it. Perhaps she had thought to spare Christina this ghastly weekend? She would not share Christina with them, certainly not with Warren and his judgemental eyes. Nor would she mention Adelaide. She and Myka rarely spoke of her, it would be strange to bring up her almost but not quite step-daughter who she only now had limited contact with. She had no right to speak of Adelaide, not after she had left her.

The Regents had created a history for her. They had presented her with a file that listed schools she had “attended” and employment she had possibly held. It was sparse and existed only so that she had quick, easy answers to questions she might be asked whilst out in the field, and to provide a limited paper trail should anyone attempt to look into her. She didn’t know what it said about her family beyond that her parents were deceased. She didn’t know if it mentioned Charles at all. She had never checked to see if Christina had been recorded. If she wasn’t then she didn’t think she could handle the injustice of her daughter being forgotten by history, to see her cast aside as unimportant, especially by those who should well know the weight of her worth. But she also knew that she could not stand to see the cold, professional and impersonal accounting of her daughter’s death again. She did not want to ever read those words again. So she had briefly flicked through the information at hand, and then had Myka read it and fill her in when needed.

“See, now she seems more like a real person,” Tracy said with a smile.

“Myka never mentioned where you met,” Jeannie said.

“London,” Myka answered curtly. “You never asked.”

“I’m sure I did.”

“I didn’t know you’d been to London either. You don’t tell me anything,” Tracy complained.

“I was working. And London isn’t that interesting; you’ve been to London before.”

“It’s a little interesting,” Helena muttered.

“Were you living in London?” Jeannie enquired politely. 

“What were you doing in London?” Tracy demanded over her mother.

“I was working.”

“As was I,” Helena said. Myka stared at her disbelievingly. “Technically I was,” Helena defended. Just because her work had a nefarious bent and wasn’t something she was directly being paid for didn’t make it any less work.

“I didn’t know the Secret Service was so active in the U.K.,” Warren said.

“Where in London did you meet?” 

Both Myka and Helena sat back in their seats. They exchanged a glance. Myka’s eyes were wide, her mouth open. She looked down at her lap, her fingers fidgeting. Helena took hold of her glass again and tipped the meagre contents around. This would be the moment where they should lie. They really should have sat down and come up with a decent story to spin, but Myka despised lying and so they had decided to stick as closely to the truth as they could and now they were stuck.

Myka mumbled something unintelligible.

“What was that?” Tracy said.

“Sorry, Myka, I didn’t catch that,” Jeannie said and leaned a little further over the table.

Myka licked her lips and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. She sighed. “I said we met at Atlas House.”

Jeannie and Tracy exchanged a confused look. Warren sat up that bit straighter, recognising the name. Kevin looked around the table and shrugged helplessly, the conversation had left him behind long ago and he had no hope of catching up.

“I don’t...” Jeannie trailed off, frowning.

“We met at H.G. Wells’ house,” Helena supplied, her own name sounding stiff on her lips. 

“You are making this up!” Tracy cried. “Mom!”

“If they say that’s where they met,” Jeannie said quietly. But she looked troubled, it obviously wasn’t at all like Myka to lie, even in a small teasing way like this might have been, but even Helena could see how to outside eyes it looked completely absurd. 

“Let me get this straight: She’s called H.G. Wells and you met at H.G. Wells’ house?” Tracy’s hands jerked about in front of her, punctuating each syllable. “This sounds like the plotline to the worst romantic comedy ever.”

Myka barked a laugh. “You have no idea.” Helena stared at her, a little hurt and confused, and Myka’s smile faltered. “Well, I just mean if you factored in the circumstances that we met, I mean, you could use a lot of tropes. Like, like we were on opposite sides or, or, rivals or something and then, then we... weren’t. Or something like that. I don’t watch a lot of romantic comedies. ”

Neither did Helena, despite both Pete and Claudia’s efforts, but she was fairly sure though that very few presented the main characters with quite as many opportunities to actually kill each other as she and Myka had. It was fortunate that Myka’s family would never be aware of how close they all came to dying by Helena’s machinations. Better by far to let them believe that she and Myka had a work rivalry.

“Where’s that damned wine?” Warren said gruffly. He swivelled in his seat looking about for the waiter.

“I’ve decided that I’m not going to believe anything else you say,” Tracy announced. She flung herself back in her seat and crossed her arms tightly, her head turned away. Myka looked up at the ceiling and made a frustrated noise. Helena could imagine that a lot of their interactions as children played out like this.

“Well, it’s certainly an interesting coincidence.” Jeannie sounded amused. “Don’t you think, Warren?”

Warren grunted, clearly not at all interested in the conversation. He looked about, trying to see where the waiter had gone. There was a flush of colour to his cheeks. He opened his jacket and flapped the lapels. “Is it warm in here?”

“A little. Dad, are you alright?” The annoyance slipped from Tracy’s face and was replaced with concern as she turned to her father.

“Fine, fine,” he muttered. “Just wanting to know why the wine’s taking so damned long.”

“I’m sure it’s on its way. It’s not worth getting agitated over.” Jeannie reached across the table to still his hands. He frowned down at them, confused, as though they were something unknown, as though he wasn’t quite sure what they were doing there.

“You sure your okay, Dad?” Myka asked. She tucked her hair behind her ear and shifted in her seat. 

“I’m fine. I said I’m fine, and I’m fine.”

Jeannie reached down and picked up her bag. “You should take one of your pills.”

“No, no.” He waved her off and forced a thin lipped smile. “I take one of those then I can’t have wine.”

“Warren,” Jeannie chided gently.

“I’m fine, you go back to talking about whatever it was you were discussing.”

Myka and Tracy turned to one another, their expressions mirroring their concern. Warren continued to wave off their worry. His face was still a bit red, though it looked as though it was calming now; his eyes were bright but not feverish. 

Tracy sighed and rolled her eyes. “We were discussing how dumb Myka’s love life is. Why can’t you just have met her in a bar like a normal person?”

“Technically we met through work. That is how normal people meet.”

“No, that’s how you meet people because you never go out.”

“I go out! I – I went out for lunch today.” Myka pushed her hair back even though it was nowhere near her face, it stuck out at the side of her head and Helena had to resist the urge to reach up and smooth it back down. Myka was bristling like an angry cat and Helena knew better than to try and touch her now.

“Doesn’t count and you know it.”

“There is nothing wrong with meeting people through work.”

“Girls, enough,” Jeannie said sharply. 

Tracy pursed her lips and glared across the table at Myka. It seemed she was in the mood to pick a fight. Myka was tensed up and defensive and clearly in the mood to give her one. This would probably only end badly. Helena finished her whisky and set the glass back down heavily. 

“Hey,” Kevin said and he reached across to Tracy and placed his hand comfortingly over her shoulder. The effect was instantaneous, Tracy melted, all the rigidity drained out of her body and sagged against her seat. She turned towards Kevin, her smile happy and relaxed, her eyes bright. She tilted her head and kissed his hand and he smiled back.

Helena glanced at Myka. She sat stiffly in her seat, one shoulder held higher than the other; her neck stretched out and twisted to the side. Her jaw was tight, her bottom lip crumpled beneath her top. Her eyes shone with unshed tears of anger and frustration. Helena could reach across to her as Kevin had done with Tracy. It might help, sometimes it did, and others Myka needed her own space and if Helena were to infringe on that she would only make the situation worse.

Gently she brushed the back of her knuckle along Myka’s arm, the barest of touches to test the water. Myka didn’t flinch away, but she certainly didn’t melt the Tracy had for Kevin. Her head cocked sharply to the side and she swallowed. Helena curled her fingers around Myka’s forearm and waited while the tension inched out of Myka’s body. Finally Myka turned to her.

“Don’t be sorry,” Helena said quietly cutting off the apology that Myka was surely about to mumble.

“I’m not,” Myka replied with a small huff. “I’m reconsidering the getting drunk rule.”

“Oh good.” Helena smiled brightly.

Myka nodded past Helena. “The wine’s here.”

“Finally!” Warren said. The waiter, Clark, walked up with their wine. He seemed to have lost the skip to his step, his hair looked more windswept than tousled and the pinkness to his cheeks a result from being out of breath.

“Sorry about the wait,” he said flourishing the wine before them.

“Did you go to California for it?” Warren demanded with a predatory smile and Clark laughed warily. Perhaps not California, but Helena would wager that he’d had to actually leave the restaurant and go buy some. This establishment was a disaster; she would be very surprised if this place was still open by the end of the month.

Warren waved off Clark’s attempts to pour for them. He took the bottle out of Clark’s hands and poured himself a generous measure, then Jeannie’s and then he passed the bottle down for Helena and Myka. “Hopefully the main course won’t take as long.”

Clark left with a definite droop to his shoulders, no doubt sure that he would not be getting a great tip for his service this evening. Warren seemed like the kind of man that would look for reasons not to tip. Helena felt a pang of sympathy. It was hardly his fault that the restaurant was so poorly managed. She made a mental note that she would ensure that he saw a sizable tip. 

She poured herself a glass and then Myka’s. 

“Look we’re getting a pretty cheap meal here,” Tracy reasoned. “And the service is not completely terrible.”

“That is really open for debate.” Myka sipped her wine and pulled a face. “That’s not great either.”

Tracy slipped back in her seat, pouting. 

“The important thing is that we are here and that we are together,” Jeannie said serenely. She sipped her wine and then grimaced, placing the glass carefully back down on the table. “That needs time to breathe.”

Helena eyed her glass of wine warily. It was typical that she wouldn’t be able to even enjoy a nice glass of wine that - even it had to be atrocious to add to an already awful evening. 

“Well,” Tracy said into the uncomfortable silence that was gathering. She pushed herself up in her seat and quickly smoothed out her hair. Her smile was uncomfortably forced. She picked up her glass of water and brandished at Myka and Helena. “Tell me about Tokyo.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This... this is really late. And I'm sorry for that. I doubt that anyone was actually waiting for this to update, but here it is!

The meal was finally, finally, over with: the dishes had been cleared away, dessert had been declined, the (hopefully) last drinks ordered, and Myka was beginning to feel like she could possibly begin to think about relaxing. Surely the worst of this trip was behind them now? All she had to do was survive the after dinner drink, make it back to her parents without incident and then fail to sleep in her old bedroom. Tomorrow she could make a quick exit and she wouldn’t have to visit her family again until Christmas.

She sipped her gin and tonic. The little plastic stirrer slapped against her cheek bone, nearly poking her eye out. She winced, fished it out and tossed it onto the table. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to her. She sighed and set her glass back down.

She was over reacting. It hadn’t actually been as bad as she had feared. As usual she had made a much bigger deal out of the situation in her head then it had warranted. The meal had gone as smoothly as a Berings family meal was ever likely to go: everyone was still alive and miraculously still soeaking to one another, Helena had thus far mostly behaved, and Myka had not been possessed with the desire to stab either herself or her father, so she could count this as a victory. There had been small problems, minor bumps in the road that made her tense up and prepare herself for the onslaught, but nothing major. The worst had been the tension between her father and Helena, and even that had been mild thanks to Tracy stepping in and redirecting the conversation.

So why did Myka feel sick to her stomach? Why couldn’t she shift this heavy feeling of dread and just relax and enjoy herself? The worst thing that had happened was that the waiter kept shooting Helena small hopeful glances as he fumbled with the cutlery. Myka ground her teeth every time he did so. He also kept trying to sneak a peek down Tracy’s dress but Myka had taken to glaring at him which seemed to work as a deterrent.

After Helena had shared a heavily edited and mostly fictional account of what had transpired in Tokyo the conversation had stayed on safe topics, topics that were approved by Tracy who steered the conversation like a maestro at the symphony. She recounted how she and Kevin had met, their early romance, their moving in together, his proposal, up to the day they found out she was pregnant. There were no attempts to change the topic of the conversation since Tracy left no opportunities for anyone to get a word in. Everyone just nodded along and murmured agreements at the moments where they were allowed to.

Myka’s input clearly wasn’t wanted so she sat at the corner of the table like a forgotten ornament. She had been slowly moving further and further away from her family as the meal progressed, and if she moved any further then she wouldn’t actually even be sitting at the table at all. She’d be adrift in the restaurant, her own little resentful island that everyone steered clear of, only the most foolhardy of sailors would brave her shore. Given how uninvolved she was in the conversation she probably could get up and leave and no one would be any the wiser.

God, she wished Pete was here.

She slowly turned her gin and tonic around, her fingertips slipping on the condensation that coated the glass. The ice had melted and she watched the sad, skinny slither of lemon bob around unrestricted.

She felt completely on edge. Her seat was too hard, her dress kept bunching uncomfortably around her midsection, her shoes pinched at her feet, and the small amount of food she had consumed sat like a rock in her stomach. Everything felt wrong.

She looked over her family from her safe distance. Chloe was awake now; she sat on Kevin’s knee clasped safely between his large hands gurgling away while Kevin talked nonsense to her. Even her parents seemed to be enjoying themselves. Her mother had a glow to her face as she listened to Tracy blather, while her father wore a thin smile and nodded along. Tracy waved her hands animatedly as she spoke, as if her story needed hand puppets to illustrate its finer points.

Myka continued to zone out. She didn’t want to hear whatever story Tracy was telling. So long as it wasn’t an embarrassing one about Myka as a child, and pretty much every story about Myka Tracy had in her arsenal was an embarrassing one, then Myka could sit silently through it.

Her gaze slid to Helena and her stomach churned with an unpleasant mix of worry, anger and guilt. Helena was drunk. She had cheerfully ignored her earlier promise to Myka and had finished off the wine, in spite of her protestations that it was the very worst wines she had ever tasted, and then enjoyed several whiskies. She was readily aided by Tracy who ordered Helena another drink as soon as her glass so much as threatened to be empty. The usually pale skin of her neck and cheeks were flushed pink, her eyes were bright and her smile loose. She leaned across the table, apparently engaged in the conversation. She didn’t laugh as loud or as much as the rest of Myka’s family, but she nodded at all the right bits and smiled along with the rest of them. Despite her earlier protestations at being here she seemed more a part of the family then Myka did.

Myka sipped her drink. Perhaps she should follow Helena’s example and drink the night away.

She looked up just as Helena glanced at her. Her head tilted to the side her gaze questioning. Myka offered her a half-hearted nod of the head-shrug combo to show she was alright. She jumped when she felt the back of Helena’s knuckles graze her knee. Helena’s questioning look morphed into a frown of disapproval, whether it was for Myka’s blatant lie that she was alright or that she should be joining in the conversation Myka didn’t know. She felt Helena tug on her dress. Myka sighed and scooted her chair closer.

“I shouldn’t complain,” Tracy said, tipping her head back and letting her hair sweep over her shoulders. “For all of his panicking he was really great when the time came.”

Kevin lifted his hefty shoulders in a slow shrug. He turned to Tracy and smiled in that way Myka knew was just for his wife. “After about the third time I fell over trying to get everything ready it all seemed pretty easy.”

“He hit his face off the kitchen counter and broke his nose,” Tracy said, smiling indulgently back at Kevin.

“It is amazing what painkillers will do to calm you down.” Kevin lifted Chloe onto his chest where she burbled, shifting her head from side to side, leaving drool trails in his shirt. 

Myka’s father grunted. She could guess how her father felt about Kevin’s well meaning bumbling through the birth of his child. She’d never actually heard him say anything against Kevin but sometimes Myka had caught him looking, seeing the disapproving frown crease his forehead. Kevin hadn’t really stood a chance. No man would ever be good enough for Warren Bering’s darling little girl.

“Were you actually cognizant for the birth then?” Helena queried. She played with her half empty glass, tipping it from side to side, sloshing about the remaining liquid while beneath the table she dragged her blunt nails along Myka’s leg. 

“Just about.” Kevin adjusted his grip on Chloe. She gurgled and whined in protest, stuffing her small fist into her mouth.

“He more or less came to just as they put her in his arms.” Tracy reached over and smoothed her hand over his thinning hair.

Helena’s hand froze. The heel of it was pressed against Myka’s thigh but her fingertips were just out of reach, hovering just above Myka’s skin.

Tracy and Kevin only had eyes for each other. Their daughter nestled between them lying on Kevin’s chest, the perfect portrait of the new family.

Her mom sighed dreamily. “It is a magical moment.”

Myka wanted to roll her eyes. While not as bad as her father Myka’s mother shared his sense of practicality. She had never been one to moon over babies or to wax lyrical about the miracle of childbirth. Myka couldn’t ever remember her speaking about the birth of her own children in anything other than the most practical way, and if Myka couldn’t remember it then it hadn’t happened.

Tracy and Kevin echoed her mother’s sigh. Myka looked down the table to see her father’s reaction. He should have looked completely uninterested; he should have been completely focussed on something else. What did he care about babies or childbirth? But he was leaning forward, his elbows resting on the tale and his fingers woven together, smiling. He nodded along and beamed over at his granddaughter as though she was the best thing in the world.

Maybe it was the Tracy effect. If Myka had birthed a child he probably would have treat it with the same level of interest that he would a bag of oranges she’d procured from the supermarket. And they probably would be the wrong kind of oranges. Tracy’s child was of course perfect in every way. 

She turned back to Helena; who was staring down at her whiskey, her gaze distant, and eyes dark in a way Myka really didn’t like.

Helena had never talked to Myka about Christina’s birth but Myka doubted that it had been the magical moment that Tracy had described, if only for the lack of modern medicine. She doubted Christina had even been born in a hospital. When Myka did think about it she imagined a dark candlelit room, bed sheets soaked in sweat and gripped in tight white knuckles. It was such an overwrought and dramatic image, like something out of a cheap period drama, and probably nothing like what had actually happened. But childbirth statistics flew threw her head, from articles she had read on the internet to her own pre-med days when she’d felt the need to devour textbooks. Words like “tearing” and “fractures” tumbled through her mind along with all the other horrors childbirth inflicted upon a woman’s body, prodding that more protective part of her mind that wondered just how much giving birth had hurt Helena.

Rationally she could deduce that Helena had a fairly normal to easy time with childbirth, she was physically fit and healthy; the marks on her body from pregnancy were minuscule. One day Myka was going to work up the courage to ask Helena all about it, about Christina’s birth and the girl herself. Helena seemed unlikely to volunteer the information; usually she dropped small facts about Christina into conversation but offered nothing substantial. But Myka was getting good at piecing these little bits of information together and forming a picture of a quiet girl who loved nature. And she did want Helena to talk to her about Christina. Not just because she wanted Helena to know that she could talk to Myka about Christina and herself, but because Myka actually wanted to know about Christina. She was often surprised by this. She had little to no interest in children, they had always been some weird other to her that she struggled to talk to and understand. She even found teenagers to be a struggle, but at least she could kind of treat them as adults, or at least like the adults that they’ll one day grow to be.

Helena was always careful not to talk about Adelaide, and Myka knew she was never going to work up the courage to ask.

“I was just thankful to get out of the hospital and go home,” Tracy said. “Even if I did have to look after Kevin as well as the baby.”

“I’m a pretty easy guy to look after.” Kevin and Tracy shared another of their sickly sweet sappy looks with each other.

“I’m gonna throw up,” Myka muttered under her breath, and Helena laughed softly. Her hand slipped down inside Myka’s knee and her fingertips tickled the skin there. 

“I can’t complain. Once he could he really stepped up, midnight feeds, diapers, the lot.”

“Warren never really had much to do with you girls when you were babies,” Myka’s mom said, as if he‘d actually had an active hand in raising them when they were out of the diaper phase. “Of course it was different back then. They didn’t expect father’s to take an active role. Was your father hands on with you and your brother?” She turned to Helena.

“God no!” Helena laughed. “I’m fairly certain he pretended we didn’t exist until we were old enough to hold conversations. And even then he kept his distance and was surprised any time we actually spoke to him.”

“Like I said, things were different back then.” 

“They most definitely were,” Helena agreed. She gave Myka’s knee a squeeze and Myka fought off the urge to roll her eyes again.

“I suppose it would be different with two women as the parents,” her mom mused. “Have the pair of you given any thought about having children?”

Myka choked on her drink. “What? God, no!” She laughed loudly. Helena’s hand froze. Myka followed up her laugh up with a snort.

Her parents exchanged a glance; her father shrugged and looked away. She could feel his disappointment all the way across the table.

“Myka, really,” her mom said. “That attitude.”

“What attitude? You asked a question and I answered.”

Her mother gave her the disapproving parent stare. 

“Myka’s got a career,” her father said softly. “She’s already made her decision.”

Myka bristled at that. Fine. He wasn’t completely wrong, she had made a decision, and her decision was that she didn’t want children. But she hadn’t picked one over the other. Even if she hadn’t had a career, even if she worked menial labour for too little pay she still wouldn’t want children. Even if she had a partner who earned millions and she never had to work a day again in her life she still wouldn’t want them. She also wouldn’t want to give up work even if she was a millionaire. She liked working. That sounded incredibly boring.

“It’s not an either or decision, dad,” she said. “Mom worked when we were little.”

“In a family business where she could decide her own hours.” His frown increased in severity. “Tracy’s decided to give up her job,” he added as thought that settled matters.

“I did,” Tracy acknowledged, hesitantly. “But I didn’t feel like I had to. I mean, we could easily afford a nanny, and we did discuss hiring one. But I decided that I’d just rather be at home with my girl. I miss work. Some days I really miss working.”

“It’s better for the child to have at least one parent at home,” her mom said. “Your father’s right. We only made it work because we own the business. You certainly couldn’t manage it with your job, it requires too much of a time commitment.”

“And that’s fine by me since I don’t want children.”

“Like I said, you already made your decision,” her said father said calmly. “There’s no need to get worked up about it.”

She hated how calm he sounded, how in control and confident that he knew her so well. She hated that he had forced her into a conversation that she wasn’t ready for, for saying words that should have been for Helena only. 

She didn’t want to look at Helena to see how she was taking this particular line of conversation. All she could think about was Christina, and then of course of Adelaide.

She didn’t want to think about Adelaide.

“I’m not getting worked up,” she said even as she knew she was. She could hear the defensiveness in her tone, could feel the heat of anger itching beneath her skin.

“Children aren’t for everyone,” Kevin said.

“Thank you, Kevin.”

“I’m confused. Isn’t that just what we were saying?” her mom said. She looked to Myka’s father for support.

“That’s what I thought. But as usual Myka decided to make it into a whole other thing.”

Myka flung her head back hard enough that she heard her chair crack. She glared up at the ceiling. Her jaw was aching with tension. Helena’s hand was still resting on her knee, cold and unmoving.

Myka didn’t think she could look at her. Beneath the anger at her parents, at Tracy for talking about babies in the first place, and even at Kevin for his misguided support, Adelaide’s name chugged around her brain on its own little rail track. She could not look at Helena for fear of what she would see there.

Once she would have said with confidence, and with sympathy, that Helena didn’t want children. Not another, not after what had happened to Christina; that she’d had loved and lost one child and that that was enough. It had been one of those things that she had been so sure about, something they had in common. One little truth about their similarities. She knew that Christina hadn’t been planned, and she easily considered her to be an outlier to Helena’s mindset regarding children.

But then Adelaide had happened and she had upended Myka’s carefully thought out truths she knew about Helena.

Chloe gurgled loudly. Myka forced herself to look down at her niece just in time to see her chuck up. 

“Oh!” Tracy immediately swivelled in her chair to fish around in the bag hanging off Chloe’s buggy, while Kevin angled her away from him. He was too late, there was already a couple of spatter spots on his trousers.

“Maybe we should get the check,” Myka suggested quietly. Surely this was the final sign that this farce of a family meal was finished. She could not go back to her room, bury her face in a pillow and prepare herself to deal with a hung over Helena tomorrow.

There were general murmurings of agreement all round. Myka reached for her purse, she’d already agreed with Tracy that she’d split the cost of the meal with her. Tracy was still preoccupied with wiping Chloe’s face. Chloe was scrunching her face up and starting to squirm and whine, while Tracy muttered, “yuck, yuck, yuck,” under her breath.

“Do you want me to contribute?” Helena asked.

Myka shook her head. “I got this.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind.”

“I said I got thi – ”

“Jon!” her father suddenly barked, causing Myka to jump. She banged her knee on the underside of the table, displacing Helena’s hand.

Abandoning her purse Myka rubbed her knee, she looked up as a thickset man and woman approached the table, both smiling. Helena looked putout, her eyes struggling to focus through the haze of alcohol.

 

“Warren. Jeanine.” Jon nodded at them. “Surprise to see you both here.”

“Kids are treating us,” her father answered, his smile stretching, warm where before it had been disinterested and cold. 

Her father turned and looked between Myka and Tracy. “You girls remember Jon and Kath?”

Tracy swivelled round from mopping up Chloe’s face and squinted. “Yeah?”

Myka didn’t. She was pretty sure Tracy didn’t either going by brief moment of confusion that flashed in her eyes, but she was clearly going to pretend that she did. Myka forced a smile.

“You guys aren’t leaving are you?” Jon asked. He had a cocky smirk and leaned back casually on his left leg, one hand tucked casually in his pocket. 

“We were,” Myka’s mom said. She glanced down the table at her family. 

“No, no, don’t go. You should stay. I hardly ever see you.” Jon flashed them all a grin. Behind him Kath stood meekly, keeping a respectable distance.

Myka’s heart sank. She could already tell by her father’s expression what he was going to say.

“Sure,” he said, smiling fully now. “We can stay for a drink, can’t we Jeannie.”

“I don’t see why not.”

Her father stood up, straightening out his jacket. “Where are you sitting?”  
“Just over here.” Jon jerked his thumb over his shoulder. And without any more to add Myka’s father followed Jon and Kath over to their table.

He left a stunned silence in his wake.

Slowly, carefully, Myka’s mom gathered her things to follow. “You don’t mind staying for another drink, do you?” She addressed Tracy.

“Uh...” For once Tracy looked lost for words. “I... I guess not.”

She nodded and followed after her husband.

“Well,” Helena said. She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “That was... rude.”

Myka snorted. That was putting it mildly.

“Honey, your parents are jerks,” Kevin said under his breath. Chloe was still whining in his hands, her little face going red.

“I know,” Tracy huffed. “Believe me I know.” And then she sighed, defeated. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. We took them out for Mom’s birthday and they pretty much did the exact same thing.”

“I’m sorry, babe.” Kevin’s smile was dripping with sympathy. He tried bouncing Chloe gently on his knee but that just made her whinge more. Tracy reached across to brush her hand over her daughter’s head, her eyes never leaving Kevin’s.

Myka looked away. She did not want to acknowledge that the heavy hot feeling in her stomach and chest was jealousy. She didn’t want children. She never had. But she did want that familiar sense of intimacy that Tracy and Kevin clearly shared. She glanced at Helena. She was looking down at her once again empty glass. They had their moments, quiet moments were they could be still together, and the fact that they could achieve those at all was still something of a surprise to Myka, but they were marred by their past. Myka could always feel the weight of what had come before when they shared those quiet moments.

“When you take me and your daddy out for family meals, Chloe, I promise to actually sit with you through the entire thing.” Tracy gently pinched Chloe’s cheek and turned back to Myka. She smiled slyly. “Well, without having the parental units around I can actually ask you the important questions.” Tracy sipped her water, eyes sparkling over the rim of her glass as she regarded Myka. “How’s the sex?”

“Tracy!” Myka exclaimed.

“Fantastic,” Helena drawled.

“Oh god.” Myka covered her face with her hand. She could feel the heat of her blush burning through her fingers. “God, you don’t want to know about that. This is so not an appropriate conversation. Your daughter is right there.”

Tracy held up a finger. “First, Chloe is not even one yet. She’s not gonna remember a thing. Second, yeah, I so do want to know these things. You wouldn’t tell me anything about Sam.”

“She told you about Sam?” Helena sounded surprised.

“That he existed, but she left out all the juicy details.”

“Because it’s none of your business,” Myka said. She dropped her hand from her face. She could still feel the heat of her blush crawling up her neck. For the life of her Myka had never understood the kind of siblings that would share details of each other’s sex lives with one another. That just seemed weird. Almost as bad as telling her mother about her sex life.

There was also the fact that despite Tracy’s grumbling, she had never actually asked Myka about her sex life with Sam.

“I don’t see why you’re getting all worked up about it. H.G.’s not bothered.”

“That’s because she’s a weirdo,” Myka huffed.

“I would, of course, like to refute this, but I believe there are several individuals who will attest to my being a ‘weirdo’.” Helena didn’t sound anywhere near as put out by her weirdo status as she usually did. The alcohol was doing wonders to mellow her.

“Can we please change the subject?” There was still a risk that Helena would start sharing sex stories.

Tracy rolled her eyes. “Fine. When are you guys going to get your own place?”

Myka and Helena looked at each other. 

“Uhhh...” Myka said in lieu of having anything resembling a real answer. “We’re not looking for our own place.”

“Why not?” Tracy demanded.

“Because we like where we live?”

“You live in a boarding house for your work.”

“It’s not a boarding house. It’s a bed and breakfast.”

“That’s worse!” Tracy waved her hands in front of her. 

“It’s a very nice bed and breakfast,” Helena chimed in. “Though Abigail does not keep it as well as Leena did.”

Myka ignored the familiar twist of pain that came with Leena being mentioned, but had to concede that this was true. 

“I don’t get how you guys can stand it. I mean, do you ever find time for yourselves?” Tracy leaned back in her seat. 

“Of course we do.” Myka couldn’t think of any examples. They certainly had never had the place to themselves. But there were little stolen moments. A dinner when they were out on retrieval, a walk, visits to museums... All of these things had happened whilst working. She didn’t want to mention these to Tracy. They seemed somehow lacking. 

Her earlier thoughts that they really needed to take some time off and getaway resurfaced. Time away from the Warehouse where they could be by themselves and talk about whatever it was they talked about when the Warehouse wasn’t looming over them.

Tracy tilted her head and stared at Myka. It was a familiar look, the kind of look she’d used to give Myka when they were teenagers and Myka would stay in studying rather than go out, confusion and pity all rolled into one. 

Myka flexed back her shoulders, her jaw clenching. She liked her life. She loved it! Tracy would never understand the amount of satisfaction Myka got from her job, or that she and Helena were absolutely fine living with their friends. Tracy was probably completely incapable of understanding that Pete and Claudia and Steve were her family and not just colleagues. Tracy had always been able to compartmentalise her life, work friends would fall into a different category to her regular friends, and no doubt when she made some mom friends through Chloe they would be boxed into a different category to all her other relationships. 

“Look, it’s - I like it, okay? It’s fine. I enjoy living where we live.” Myka picked up her drink and gulped down several mouthfuls.

“It is pleasant,” Helena added. “Of course there are downsides. For example I could do without having to share a bathroom with Pete.”

“You don’t even have your own bathrooms?” Tracy exclaimed, horrified. “That’s awful.”

“And the hot water does tend to run out rather quickly. Especially when Pete takes one of his shower power hour things.”

“It’s just Power Shower. And it’s how he relaxes,” Myka said. She had a feeling that a lot of Helena’s gripes were about to be Pete related and was already feeling defensive about it. They all had their own way of relaxing after a particularly difficult retrieval, and the shower was Pete’s. 

“I know. But perhaps if he found a way to relax without using all the hot water.” Helena turned to Myka. “Calling it a power shower sounds as though it should be over with quickly rather than taking at least an hour.”

“Please tell me that there’s more than one bathroom,” Tracy said. “This whole thing sounds awful. You guys need your own place.”

“We’re happy where we are!” Myka countered. “We find plenty of time for ourselves. Everything’s fine.”

“How can it possibly be fine when you have to share a bathroom? Even Kevin and I have our own bathrooms.” 

Kevin smiled, bouncing Chloe on his knee. “She gets the ensuite and I have the one down the hall.” 

“That – That’s ridiculous.” Myka tried to sweep her hand through her hair but her fingers got knotted at the back. “And there isn’t just one bathroom. There’s a few. We don’t need our own, do we Helena?”

“Our own bathroom would not solve the hot water problem.”

“Exactly.”

“But then I also wouldn’t have to use it after Pete has been on a burrito session.”

Tracy held her hands upon as though that settle the argument. Myka had to concede it was never okay to walk into the bathroom the morning after burrito night, there was only so much an open window could do after all, but the alternative was to leave. For her and Helena to fine their own place. And that was ridiculous.

 

Myka sighed. “I like where we are.”

She certainly wasn’t averse to the idea of her and Helena one day having their own place, but right now they were fine where they were, weren’t they? They both enjoyed the company. They both enjoyed their work. The B&B was a comfortable distance to both the Warehouse and to Univille. It just seemed too soon to be getting a place of their own. Where would they even go? It wasn’t as though Univille was offering prime real estate. Featherhead seemed far too far away, and if that was too far away from the Warehouse then Rapid City was definitely too far. And when would she see Pete? 

“If you say so,” Tracy said, shrugging dismissively.

Myka picked up her gin and tonic and sipped it. Helena’s hand still rested on Myka’s leg, her thumb brushing back and forth slowly. The gesture was more irritating then it was comforting and Myka had to resist the urge to brush Helena’s hand away. 

Her skin prickled, like it was too tight or she’d caught the sun. She knew she just wanted to get away for a bit. Get some fresh air and put some distance between her and Tracy, to find the space to work up some anger at Tracy for judging her life and then to pace it off.

“Do you ever get the place to yourselves?”

Why couldn’t she just let this go? 

Myka rolled her shoulder. “Sometimes.”

“When?” Helena scoffed. Myka glared at her but Helena just stared right back. “When have we ever had the B&B to ourselves?”

“There was...” Myka groped though her memory for a time. “I don’t know, okay? We probably haven’t. Happy?”

“Ecstatic. Clearly.” Helena tipped back her glass to catch the last little dribble of whisky.

“That’s awful,” Tracy said.

“Abigail and I have had the place to ourselves,” Helena said. “Fairly often, actually. She’s quite agreeable company.”

Tracy’s eyebrows rose. She looked to Myka, her eyes wide. “Who’s this Abigail person?”

“The inn keeper,” Myka answered her tone sullen. She was absolutely not jealous that Helena probably spent more time with Abigail then with herself.

“Ooookay,” Tracy said. She and Kevin shared a look silently communicating with their marriage gained telepathy. He shrugged and Chloe burbled in his arms. Tracy turned back to Myka her smile far too bright. “So, Myka, guess who I ran into the other day? Kurt Smoller.”

Myka’s insides froze. There was that uncomfortable knot of tension again; resting in her gut and making her feel sick. She brushed Helena’s hand off her leg and shifted in her seat. “Really?”

“Who is Kurt Smoller?” Helena asked. Would it be too much to ask that Tracy decide to not tell her? Or even for her to suddenly lose her voice?

“Myka’s high school crush,” Tracy answered, because the universe hated Myka and wanted her to suffer. 

“Oh?” Helena sounded so very interested. She sat up and leaned forward, resting her elbow on the table, and propping her chin up on her hand. “Do tell!”

“Don’t!” Myka hissed. She tried to kick Tracy under the table but missed and hit the table itself. She winced as her big toe throbbed with the impact. “There’s nothing to tell,” Myka said emphatically. She glared at Tracy and mentally willed her to shut up. 

Tracy smiled archly. She knew exactly what she was doing. This was a reminder of the Tracy of their childhood, back in high school and wielding gossip like it was a weapon. “He was the star quarterback and most popular guy in school,” Tracy explained with a pleased smirk. “Myka used to tutor him.”

“Well, that was certainly considerate of you.” Helena sounded as though she thought Myka’s actions were anything but considerate. “And what went on in these tutoring sessions?”

“Math. Math went on and occasionally science.” Myka hated how defensive she sounded. 

“Come now, darling, there’s no shame in having a bit of a roll and poke amongst the exercise books.”

“Oh my god!” Myka could feel the swell of horror rising in her chest. She couldn’t convince her mouth to close and she worked her jaw uselessly. “That – that is so not what happened! Studying. Studying happened and that’s all!”

Helena cocked her head to the side and squinted unsteadily at Myka. “Really?”

“Yes, really. I had a very embarrassing and very clichéd crush on the most popular guy in school and _nothing_ happened.”

Helena’s expression softened, the lines of annoyed suspicion morphing into something sadder, closer to pity. Her lips parted and she drew in a breath, swaying slightly in her seat. Myka felt a flare of annoyance. No doubt if Helena had been in Myka’s position it would have been less studying and more knickers off and legs in the air. It was just another reminder of how she’d failed at being a teenager. All those hours she’d been alone with Kurt and nothing had ever happened. She hadn’t had the courage to instigate anything and he hadn’t the inclination.

Myka snatched up her drink. She pressed her free hand to her neck to test the heat that prickled beneath her skin. An angry blush was crawling its way up her neck and staining her cheeks, like the shame could burn her from the inside out.

“Kurt totally liked you too,” Tracy chipped in.

It would probably ruin the evening if Myka were to punch Tracy. 

“Did he now?” Helena murmured. She watched Myka carefully. Her fingers played with the rim of her empty glass.

“No,” Myka replied. “He didn’t.”

“He totally did,” Tracy countered.

Myka rolled her eyes and huffed out a breath. She didn’t know what Tracy’s problem was and why she was so focussed on... What? Stirring up drama between her and Helena? That didn’t feel like something Tracy would do to her. 

Helena’s gaze slid from Myka down to the empty glass in her hand where she stared at it like she could mentally will it to refill.

“He didn’t.” Myka placed her hand on Helena’s leg and felt the tension there.

“How can you say that? You were the only girl he wanted tutoring him.” Tracy made it sound like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You remember Stacie Alder? She desperately wanted to be the one tutoring him. She was all like: ‘my grades are just as good as Myka’s.’”

“What? No they weren’t.”

“Exactly.” Tracy tossed her hair behind her shoulder. “And everyone knew she was easy but even knowing that Kurt only wanted you.” She paused and leaned back in her seat, and took a sip of her water. “As a tutor I mean.”

“Fascinating,” Helena drawled. 

Myka pinched the bridge of her nose and hissed out a breath. “Or he actually wanted a tutor. Someone who could actually help him and not a – not an easy lay.”

“My glass is empty,” Helena announced. “I’m going to the bar.” She stood up quickly and staggered back two steps before catching herself and planting her feet firmly. She gave herself a small shake and headed to the bar.

Myka gazed after her. She was definitely more unsteady on her feet than Myka had been expecting but she managed to make it to the bar without stumbling again. ~Once she was out of danger if tripping over her own feet Myka snapped her head back round to Tracy and glared at her. 

Tracy smiled. “The more she drinks the more she sounds like Mary Poppins.”

Kevin laughed softly. Chloe whined and pressed her face into his arm.

“What are you doing? Why did you bring up Kurt?”

“What, I’m not allowed to bring up guys you went to school with?” Tracy rolled her eyes. “He was your friend.” She shrugged and wrinkled her nose. “Kind of. I thought you might like to hear how he’s doing.”

Myka pushed back her seat and stood up. “Thanks,” she bit off, and turned from the table to follow after Helena.

“What?” Tracy yelled after her.

Helena was resting her forearms on the bar top, her back to the room. Myka slid up next to her. She tucked her hair behind her ear and licked her lips. “Hey,” she said, as casual as she could manage.

Helena glanced at her. “Hello yourself.”

“I’m sorry about Tracy. Sometimes, like, most of the time she’s an idiot. Are you alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Myka frowned. Helena’s tone was surly but that could have just been the drink colouring it. The bartender returned with yet another drink for Helena and Myka had to bite down on her annoyance. She slid the drink away from Helena’s reach. “I think you’ve had enough of these.”

“You’re probably right.” Helena sighed a little too dramatically. “You usually are.”

“No,” Myka said sternly. “No. You are not picking a fight with me just because you’re drunk and you didn’t like hearing about stupid Kurt Smoller.”

“I’m not upset about some silly boy you had a fancy for.” She raked her fingers through her hair and tossed it back. “You are allowed to have a past Myka. It does not surprise me that you had a crush on this boy nor that you were utterly oblivious that he fancied you.”

Myka raised an eyebrow. “Uh- huh. You done?”

The corners of Helena’s mouth drew down as she considered. “Yes,” she said finally, picking at her own fingers.

Myka nodded once sharply. She picked up the whiskey she’d confiscated from Helena and sipped it.

“Oh, I see that you’re allowed to drink it.”

“I’m not the one three sheets to the wind.”

Helena’s shoulders lifted and her head went down, her sulk increasing. Her hands rested on the bar top; her fingers playing idly with her ring, spinning the metal band clockwise a turn then counter-clockwise, back and forth. She wasn’t looking though. Her dark eyes were unfocussed, looking past her hands and seeing something that wasn’t there. 

Myka sipped the whisky again, swishing it round her mouth before swallowing down its warmth. She sighed and put the glass down. She nudged Helena’s arm with her elbow. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” She asked before Helena could become completely lost in thought. 

“Nothing.”

“Right. Nothing. Sure, honey.”

Helena scowled. She turned slowly around and leaned back against the bar, gazing out over the room, her eyes flickering from Myka’s parents over to Kevin and Tracy.

Her mom and dad were still enjoying themselves with their friends. They were both smiling, laughing occasionally at the conversation, their children forgotten for the moment. Tracy was rifling through the bag hanging off the buggy while Kevin bounced an increasingly fussy Chloe. 

Myka scratched at her head. “Alright. Okay, I can see why my family would put you in a mood.”

“I’m not in a mood.”

“You are most definitely in a mood.” Myka laughed. “But that is okay. They are a bit much.”

Helena glowered. “A bit much would be if they were over enthusiastic in greeting me. A bit much would be if they went out of their way to make me feel welcome and crossed personal boundaries to do so. This is not ‘a bit much’ this is...” She sucked in a breath and held it, her chest all puffed up. And then, as if she’d been pricked by a pin, she deflated. 

“Fine, so they’re not the most welcoming bunch.” It shouldn’t have hurt that Helena didn’t like her family, plenty of partners didn’t like their in-laws, but it did. It felt a little like Helena disliked a part of Myka. And that was absurd. Myka loved her family but she actively chose to be apart from them. She wouldn’t go as far as to say that she didn’t like them though. The important thing was that Helena liked and loved Myka’s Warehouse family. That should be enough for Myka.

But then there was that small voice in the back of her head the little niggle of doubt that said that Helena only tolerated the Warehouse for Myka’s sake. She had wanted to leave after all. She had wanted a life away from the artefacts and the glorious madness and the people. Away from Myka and everything she loved. Perhaps asking Helena to tolerate another family was just too much. Helena had been right. They weren’t her family. Why should she ever be involved with them?

She bunched her hair up in her fist. There still wasn’t much of a crowd even though the evening was wearing on. Her parents were still with their friends, chatting away, and Tracy had gone over to join them, leaving an exhausted looking Kevin with their daughter.

There was distance here, and Myka could feel it widening. Between herself and her parents, between her and Tracy and the way she didn’t fit into Tracy’s new family. Worse she could feel it between her and Helena, cold and sharp and growing. 

“Would you like to step outside?”

Myka startled. Helena’s voice had been soft but she’d been so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn’t been expecting it. “What?”

“Outside. It’s a little... warm in here.”

She did look flushed. Myka downed the whisky and set the glass back on the bar to. She hissed through the burn and shuddered at the taste, it was a terrible brand. “Sure. Let’s go get some air.”

It would probably be a good idea to get Helena a drink of water. Maybe some coffee.

Myka put her hand to Helena’s arm and gently guided her away from the bar. She seemed steadier on her feet than she had before, but Myka wanted to be prepared just in case she stumbled over her own feet.

“I honestly don’t understand what she sees in him.”

“What?” Myka turned to Helena. She was looking over at Kevin. “Tracy and Kevin? Why?”

“It’s fascinating. I don’t think anyone would, at a glance, ever guess that they are married.”

“They wouldn’t?”

“No. Surely you just need to observe them to see that. Consider Tracy a moment.”

Myka did: Tracy was still at their parents table, talking to the group. She laughed her eyes happy and bright, her smile wide. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, her hands moving animatedly before her as she spoke.

“And now let us turn to Kevin.”

Kevin had collapsed in his seat. He had taken off his jacket, his shirt was rumpled and sweat stains were encroaching from his armpits, his tie lay crooked across his chest. His hair was stuck up at odd angles where he had run his hand through it repeatedly revealing a retreating hairline. He was pushing Chloe back and forth in her buggy, a glazed look in his eye.

“Back to Tracy,” said Helena.

Tracy who was elegant and beautiful, wearing a dress that she obviously knew took advantage of her post-pregnancy curves. Tracy who had engaged pretty much everyone in joint conversation and was buzzing like the social bee she was.

“Once more to Kevin.”

Kevin whose only companion was his crying baby daughter. Kevin who had sunk further down in his seat and had a gut that strained against his belt, on which he could comfortably rest a beer.

“I don’t think we’re seeing Kevin at his best,” Myka said, carefully, tactfully.

“I don’t think we have ever seen Kevin at his best. I don’t think we will ever see Kevin at his best. I do not think that Kevin has a best.”

Myka had to take a moment to process that. “You’re a mean drunk.”

“It is infuriating!” Helena cried. “She is, as Pete would say, out of his league. Now I can understand her looking past the fact that he is physically an inferior specimen – “

_“Helena!”_

“ – that is something she can work on. Make him exercise; dress him in expensive clothes as she has done tonight. I can understand how a man who is not aesthetically blessed can woo a woman who is, but to do that would require him to have an engaging personality, and Kevin, frankly, is the dullest man I have ever had the misfortune of being trapped in a conversation with.”

“Now you’re just being cruel.” It would probably be a bad idea for her to say that she’d had similar thoughts about Nate. “Kevin is... He’s...” she’s groped for a word. “He’s nice.”

Helena snorted. “Now who is being cruel? Nice? Nice is how we describe people when we can’t think of anything more interesting about them. You have reinforced my point quite succinctly.”

“There is nothing wrong with being nice.”

“There is everything wrong with being nice if it is the only descriptor we can apply.”

Myka craned her head back and glared up at the ceiling as if it would hold the answer to the problem of the many and ever changing moods and thoughts of Helena G. Wells. Fine. She agreed with Helena. Kevin was a bit on the uninteresting side. He wasn’t the usual buff athletic specimen that Tracy had dated in high school and college. She didn’t get what Tracy saw in him, but if he was what made Tracy happy then Myka was happy for the both of them. And a little jealous. Tracy probably didn’t get caught in conversation with a morosely drunk Kevin discussing his disapproval of her sister’s love life.

She reached back and took hold of Helena’s wrist, “Come on,” she huffed, pulling her towards the exit. Helena’s skin felt warm beneath her hand. She stumbled along as Myka half dragged her towards the door. Myka glanced back over her shoulder. Tracy had finished whatever her riveting tale had been – probably about baby poop – and had rejoined Kevin. She held Chloe close alternating between rubbing and patting her back. Kevin looked like he was considering running for the hills. Her parents looked like they were having the time of their lives. Both were red in the face, both laughing loudly, their lips twisted into grins. God, she had never seen her dad smile like that, couldn’t remember hearing him laugh so much.

They had nearly made it to the door when a voice Myka knew all too well boomed across the room.

“Myka!”

She froze. Helena nearly bumped into her back. Myka stood rigid, her feet glued to the floor. Her father’s voice had always had this effect on her, usually low and soft, more terrible for being quiet, but sometimes, just sometimes much louder. The dread started in her gut, small and cold, a wave of nausea that she fought to keep down. She had never heard her father’s voice like this. Loud? Yes. Shouted? Yes. But never with cheer in it. That shouldn’t have made it more terrifying.

Myka gulped, like she had done when she was a child, when she had been a teenager awaiting his rebuking words.

Helena’s fingers curled around Myka’s hip. Her breath was warm on Myka’s bare shoulder. “Myka,” she whispered.

And Myka wanted to laugh; could feel a laugh, shrill and hysterical clawing its way up her throat. What was wrong with her? Her father’s voice should not have had this effect on her, especially not when he sounded so happy.

But she had never known him to sound happy and the unknown was always at least a little scary.

She turned around. The room had gone eerily quiet. All she could hear was Helena’s heavy breathing and Chloe’s pitiful whines. Her parents were still seated with Jon and Kath, all sitting quietly, smiling, and looking right at her. Her dad stood and held his arms put like he expected her to dash towards him and fling herself into his arms for a hug.

“Come on, Myka,” he said, waving her over. “You’ve barely said a word to us all night, sport. Come join us.”

Myka tightened her grip on Helena’s wrist. Her gaze flicked over to Tracy and Kevin. Kevin was still sat in his seat looking near comatose. Tracy was walking around in aimless circles with a struggling Chloe clasped in her arms. Both were oblivious to what was going on.

“We could just leave,” Helena suggested quietly. “Walk out and go home.”

“Myka, come on,” her dad said again, still smiling, still sounding so damned happy.

Something was wrong. Alarm bells were ringing in Myka’s head. Something was weirdly wrong.

Helena’s grip on Myka’s hip tightened, pinching the fabric of her dress. She pressed up against Myka’s back and hissed in Myka’s ear, “You don’t owe him anything.”

“I’m alright,” Myka said slowly, more calmly than she felt. The tension in her muscles were fight or flight, apprehension ready to react at a moment’s notice. She turned to Helena and forced a smile. “You go on outside and I’ll join you in a minute.”

“Are you certain?” Helena’s gaze slid from Myka to her family. “I can remain with you.”

“I’m not sure you calling dad an ass again would really help.” And in her drunken state she was likely to be more of a hindrance than a help.

“An arse,” Helena corrected. “But I see your point.”

She pressed her lips to the corner of Myka’s mouth and slipped away leaving Myka on her own.

Myka watched her retreating form. She squared back her shoulders and turned around, and slowly made her way towards her parents. 

“Why so slow?” her dad said, and he laughed, and the rest of them laughed along with him. “Come on, come on, sport.”

Myka stayed on her steady advance, forcing herself to feel calm. 

Her mom stood as she approaching and looked as if she was about to tear up from sheer joy. She reached up and seized Myka’s face in her hands, pressing her cheeks between her palms.

“I’m so glad my baby girl is home,” she gushed.

“Uh, sure? I’m glad to be home, mom,” Myka said through squashed lips. It was wrong. Tracy had always been the baby. Myka had only enjoyed the privilege of being her parents’ baby girl for the two years before Tracy was born. And even then she was probably just a fleshy lump that her parents fed and watered, something they probably took as much parental joy out of as they would a pet rock. 

Her mom beamed some more and sat down, releasing Myka from her surprisingly strong grip.

“Sit, Myka, sit.” her dad grasped her shoulders and steered her to an empty chair, firmly pushing her down onto it. Her parents’ friends, Jon and Kath, grinned back at Myka, their smiles stretched back like there were hooks caught in the corner of their moths stretching them back. 

“We’re so proud of you,” her dad said. He roughly squeezed her shoulders in the fatherly way he might have squeezed a sons shoulders before lowering himself down onto the chair next to her.”So proud.”

“So proud,” her mom echoed.

“Um, thanks?” Myka smiled nervously. 

No big deal. Her parents and their friends had obviously taken drugs while she wasn’t looking. Or suffered blows to the head. Maybe some kind of food poisoning.

She resisted the urge to sigh as she scanned over the table seeking out the artefact that was casing this particular bout of crazy. The plates had been cleared away as had most of the cutlery. There were empty glasses, two wine bottles and a bottle of some European beer, napkins and a three pronged candleholder that had no candles in it. She narrowed her eyes at it. Suspect number one. Now if only she had gloves and a static bag on her. Her clutch did have exactly what she needed in it but she had left it at her previous table. She didn’t think it was likely that her dad was going to let her get up and go retrieve it.

“I was just telling Jon and Kath how proud of you we are.” he turned to his companions. “Wasn’t I just saying how proud of her I am?”

“You were,” Jon said. “So proud.”

“So proud,” Kath repeated.

“So proud,” they all said in union.

“Hey, uh, mom, dad?” Myka swallowed. “Did you guys by any chance come into contact with something, I dunno, unusual?”

“See! This is what I’m talking about. She’s so smart.” Her father reached over and gripped her shoulder tightly, his fingers digging into her flesh. “She notices things. Makes connections. She’s so smart.”

“So smart,” her mom agreed.

“So smart,” Jon and Kath chorused.

“So smart,” said an extra voice. Myka looked over to find the waiter, Clark, grinning mindlessly at her.

“Seriously?” She made a small frustrated noise. She picked up a lone fork that had managed to escape the notice of the waiters when they’d cleared the plates away. She used the fork to tip over the candelabrum. It tipped over too easily and felt too light to be something old, but it didn’t need to be old to be an artefact. Everyone was watching her in rapt silence. She used the fork to drag it towards her, hooked it over the edge and shuffled the cheap metal around so she could see the base. There was a worn sticker with peeling edges on the bottom. Her parents and everyone else leaned in. No one tried to stop her. She tilted her head and squinted, reading the faded print on the label. “IKEA? Really?”

Everyone burst into a round of applause.

“So smart!”

“So proud!”

Myka fought the urge to run away. They were still applauding, clapping their hands with manic enthusiasm. Her mom pulled her into a hug and sobbed, “So proud,” into her ear.”

Myka needed to revise her mental list of weirdest situations she had found herself in. This was going on it and probably near the top. She turned her head trying to look over her shoulder; it was surprisingly difficult to do with her mom’s arms around her neck, all those years of hefting hardcover books had given her impressive guns. She shouldn’t have sent Helena away. Drunk as she was an extra set of hands would probably have helped here. 

“Tracy!” she screeched. “Tracy!” 

At the very least she could get Tracy to toss her clutch over so she could have gloves on. And then she could tell Tracy to run for it. “Tracy!” She yelled again, trying to swivel round so she could find her sister. But Tracy wasn’t there. Kevin was standing on his own; staring slack jawed at her, his arms hanging loose at his sides. He looked like a big ape, his upper body leaning back and his pelvis thrust forward just slightly. This was probably how Helena saw him: a big ape that treats could be fed to but was probably best ignored.

“Kevin!” Myka bellowed her voice was muffled by her mother’s arm. “My bag! Get me my bag!”

“So proud,” Kevin intoned. Tracy would probably be upset if something were to happen to him but it was awfully tempting to throw the stupid candlestick holder at his stupid head right now.

She swung her head back and looked over her mom’s shoulder. Jon and Kath were leaning over the tables their mouths too wide and their eyes bright with crazy. The waiter was positively quivering with his enthusiasm for how proud he was of Myka. Myka tried to pry her mother’s arms from around her neck, but couldn’t. She felt like she was trapped in a vice, a soft fleshy vice pressing uncomfortably against the side of her neck.

“Right. Okay.” Myka panted, pulling ineffectually at her mom’s arms. “Thanks, mom. Really, thanks. I’m glad you’re happy. That you’re proud.”

“So proud.”

“Yeah I got that!” She really didn’t want to hurt her mom, but how was she supposed to free herself? Her hug was tightening to worrying levels, squeezing the side of her neck, making it difficult to think, to breathe. She had to get her off. “Mom? Mom!” She dug her fingers into the edge where her mom’s arms met her neck and tried to pry her off. “Mom! Let me go!”She made a frustrated little scream and managed to lever her head back, but that only exposed more of her neck for her mom to constrict. “Helena!” She yelled, desperately. “Helena!”

Her mother let go suddenly. She sat back in her seat and stared at Myka. “Helena?” 

Myka rubbed her neck. She took several deep, shuddering breaths. “Yeah, you know, Helena,” she said carefully. “She swallowed, too aware of all the eyes that were on her. “British. Great hair. Kinda pale.” She licked her lips nervously and said quietly, “my girlfriend.”

Silence. Absolute silence. It was as if all the sound had been sucked out of the room, as though they were suddenly in a vacuum. Myka couldn’t even hear anyone breathing, not even her own.

Her mom flumped back in her seat and the sound of it was far too loud.

“Oh,” she said and again it was too loud. Her eyes watered up and her chin trembled at the threat of an onslaught of tears.

Myka’s mouth worked, open and close, but she couldn’t find any words to say, any noise even to make. She turned her head intending to shout for Helena when her mom flung her arms in the air and shrieked. She threw herself at Myka, buried her face in her lap, her hands grasping at Myka’s legs, her sides, her dress, anywhere they could possibly find purchase. Myka squirmed back, tense and uncomfortable, the last person to cling to her like this had been Helena, and – _god_ – why had she thought of that now? Her mom started sobbing. Loudly.

“Uh...” Myka didn’t know what to do. She hadn’t seen her mom cry before. Not really. A few tears for sad movies, some for when her dad had been whammied, but nothing like this. And this was clearly artefact induced so it shouldn’t have counted, but it was her mom and she was crying like Tracy had died.

Myka patted her shoulder. “There, there?”

“Now, Jeannie,” her dad said with a sympathetic sageness he had never possessed. “They have to grow up sometime.”

“Helena!” Myka screamed over her shoulder. She had to get out of here.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I'm being very unfair to Kevin...

Helena curled her fingers around the metal railing. It was rough and cool beneath her grasp, a welcome relief from the oppressive heat of the restaurant. She leaned forward and looked over the railing to the street, at the traffic, at the seemingly endless amount of people all completely ignorant of what was happening inside the restaurant. The street was busier than she had expected. But then it was earlier in the evening than it felt; so many would still be making their way home from work and so many more making their way out for the night.

She sucked in a breath and then another and another after that. The air was warm and dry, too thin and difficult to draw in. Her throat felt raw, the air a dry rasp against the back of it. It was actually warmer out here than it was in the restaurant, but out here she was free of the atmosphere that the Myka’s family created.

It started with Warren and spread from him, like an air borne toxin, and had infected the rest of his family. A miasma. A poisonous invisible smog. It had seeped from him, thick and cloying and had infected the rest of them. It worked under their skins, got into their blood like a dark poison and worked hooks into their flesh, tethering them to him and left them enthralled to his bitterness. Why else would they stay? Why else would Myka ever want to reconcile with him, to have him be a part of her life. He was a poison worked so deep into her blood that he could never be purged from it.

Helena worked her hands on the metal railing, wringing it like a chicken’s neck, grinding the soft flesh of her palm against it hard enough that she could the skin threatening to tear.

These were the kind of thoughts she wasn’t supposed to be having. The ones she spoke to Abigail about in an effort to purge herself of them. It was too easy for her to slip back down the slope, to let the negative and dark thoughts consume her mind.

The meal had been horrendous. The tension that existed between them; everyone was just balancing on the edge waiting for someone to say or do something that would push them over.

Helena wished they could go back to earlier in the day. It hadn’t been perfect, Myka had been on edge, but their afternoon of wandering, their lunch together, it had at least been bearable. 

The awful weight of dread had settled in Helena’s breast and weighed heavily all day; it was not unlike the sense of hopeless dread she had felt when she was waiting on the Regents deciding her fate. Both times.

She had wanted to take Myka’s hand and drag her from the room, to take her away from these people and tell her that they would never see them again. But she couldn’t. It was too late. Myka was already infected, had been since long before Helena had even met her, and she didn’t know how to save her.

She closed her eyes and worked her fingers on the bar, forcing them to open and close, attempting to loosen her death grip.

But at the bar Myka had acted as though Helena were the one out of sorts. It was as if she was unaware of how this miasma was affecting her, as though she hadn’t sat through the meal rigidly, her neck stretched out and pulling in the wrong direction, her laugh too brittle and her smile too symmetrical to be real. Like she hadn’t flinched whenever Tracy spoke, or looked like she wanted to die when Tracy brought up that idiot boy from her school days.

Helena was not going to think about that boy. He was unimportant, and she had meant it when she had told Myka that she didn’t care that Myka had fancied him. Myka was, indeed, allowed to have a past and she believed Myka that nothing had happened with him. Myka was incapable of lying about these things. So as long as Helena never had to meet this boy then she could put him in a box and store him in the back of her mind and never pay him any heed again. It would be like he never existed.

She was gripping the bar far too tightly again. She looked down at her hands, frowning. The skin over her knuckles was stretched tight, little white mountains, sharp and prominent sticking up towards the sky. She forced her fingers open and felt the ache along the back of her hand. She dropped her hands to her sides and stepped back. She gazed out at the unfamiliar city and knew that despite this being Myka’s home town she would never harbour any love for it. She very much wanted to be elsewhere and to be able to take Myka with her.

The door behind her banged open and Helena turned, hoping for Myka, but the wrong sister emerged. Tracy had a near purple in the face Chloe in her arms. She smiled apologetically at Helena and closed the door behind her, dumping a bag on the floor.

“Thought we’d get a little air,” she explained. She knelt down and began rifling through the bag with one hand while trying to hold an extremely fussy Chloe with the other.

“Is everything alright in here?” Helena asked. She shouldn’t have left Myka alone, but couldn’t possibly have stood another minute in that dark tense room. The dread in her chest was turning into something sharper, something more sinister and terrifying. She really shouldn’t have left Myka. Or she should have forced Myka to come outside with her. But it couldn’t be that bad, could it? Tracy seemed fine.

“I think everyone’s drunk.” Tracy continued her one-handed search in her bag, not even looking up at Helena. Chloe increased her whines and her squirming, twisting this way and that. “Oh for god’s sake.” Tracy stood, pivoted and thrust Chloe at Helena. “Here. Can you hold her for a minute?”

“Of course I can.” Whether she would was another question entirely, but Helena took hold of Chloe, who, upon realising that she was now in the arms of a near stranger rather than her mother’s increased her struggling, her little face crumpling more and actual tears being summoned. Tracy went back to searching through her bag, apparently intent on ignoring Helena’s struggles with her child.

Grimacing, Helena twisted Chloe round, adjusting her grip and holding her almost diagonal across her body, and tucked her in close. There was an uncomfortable looking twist to her small body, but Helena immediately felt the tension drop out of Chloe. Her wails quietened to whines then into a gentle hum and finally into content silence.

“There we go. That’s better isn’t it, darling?” Helena cooed, smiling. Joy and pride swelled in her that she still remembered how to do this. Christina had been the same, so fussy and particular about the way she was held, but once you got it right so quiet and pliant. God help you if you got it wrong though, she had been able to scream for hours on end without seemingly needing to stop and take a breath.

“Oh, you got her to settle.” Tracy slumped against the wall and just seemed to deflate. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. All of her earlier exuberant energy had deserted her and now she looked just like the tired new mother she actually was rather than that picture of domestic perfection she seemed to be trying so hard to sell.

“Would you like her back?” Helena asked. Chloe’s eyelids were starting to droop.

“God no!” Tracy barked and then winced. “I mean, yes, obviously.” She rolled her eyes and smiled sheepishly. “Just not yet. She’s good with you. You just keep doin’ what your doin’.”

“Alright then.” Helena nodded and adjusted her arms as Chloe squirmed a little. She started to walk, not far and slowly, gently rocking Chloe a little in her arms. She could feel the steady beat of Chloe’s heart against her hand. The warmth and weight of her, the gentle sound of her breathing, even the way she had gripped a fistful of Helena’s shirt; it was all so achingly familiar of when Christina had been this small and this dependant on her. She had always been far too eager to put Christina down, to get her settled quickly so that she could continue with her work. She should have cherished those moments with her, held longer and closer. 

There had been those times though when she had nursed her, sat quietly in the old rocking chair that wobbled and creaked, and made so many promises to her darling girl. Told her of the things she was going to teach her, the places she would take her and the wonders she would see. That she would always be there for her. That she would protect her.

She had failed in all these things. She had never had the time to teach her the things she should have or to take her to all those places she had promised, she had too often been unwilling to make the time and had instead left Christina with Sophie, who she feared was often more of a mother to Christina then she had ever been. 

The question was burning at the back of her mind. It had settled unpleasantly in her gut ever since she had first seen how Myka interacted with her parents, and it had been compounded further this evening seeing how both Myka and Tracy acted around their family. At the way they both reacted with dread and a small amount of fear to their father, their quiet disappointment with their mother. It was written in every movement they made, every word spoken - Myka and Tracy could not stand their parents. Helena did not doubt that they both loved their parents, but it was a love born from familial obligation. 

And there was the question that was steadily eating away at Helena. If Christina had lived, if she had grown, would she eventually have grown to resent, even hate her mother?

Her mother who was always far more interested in her work, who was always away from home, who so very rarely had time to spend with her; but who also brought her presents from far off countries and told her stories, and when she did make the time, was there and wholly there, and who had loved her with every shred of herself, and that had to have counted for something, because it just had to have.

It was an utterly pointless question to torture oneself with. Christina had not lived, had not grown, and Helena would never know if they would have remained close. Or if the closeness they shared was just a product of Christina’s dependence on her.

Chloe had fallen asleep. Helena stopped her aimless wandering.

“You’re pretty good at this,” Tracy said. 

“Yes. Well.” Helena said thickly. “I have had some practice.”

Tracy smiled softly. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” She picked at her dress. She looked like she wanted to ask a question but possibly couldn’t find the words. She looked up at Helena and squinted, thinking, and she looked so much like Myka when she was turning ideas over in her mind, and Helena waited for the inevitable question. She didn’t know how she would answer: with a partial truth, because she could never vocalise the full truth, or with an outright lie. Tracy shucked her shoulders and tilted her head. “Some night, huh?”

Helena blinked in surprise. “Yes, it has been.” 

Tracy laughed hollowly. “I didn’t even know that Myka had been to half the places she’s been to.” She began picking at her dress again. Her smile was rigid and stretched wide, so much like Myka’s was when she was desperately trying to pretend that she was alight. “Don’t tell Myka this, and I get that’s probably a stupid thing to say since you’re probably one of those couples that tell each other everything.” They absolutely were not. They were one of those couples that had far too many secrets between them, and that was, Helena suspected, mostly her own fault.

Tracy exhaled and continued. “I’m jealous. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love my life. I love Kevin and Chloe is... She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Helena waited. Chloe was still snuggled against her, her breaths coming in little snores and her heart a steady rhythm against Helena’s hand. 

Tracy frowned down at her lap, at the way her dress was bunched up from her pulling at it. She started smoothing it out.

“If someone had asked me when we were in school which of us was more likely to travel the world then I would have said me. Myka always had her head in a book and had no interest in the world. Or didn’t seem to. Her world was in her room and with her books. The few times she was forced to actually go out and socialise she looked so damned uncomfortable, so how could she ever navigate the world and people if she couldn’t even get through an evening with her own peers?. I never doubted that Myka was going places; I just imagined that those places would be in a swanky office with a big comfy chair and a huge over priced desk. And yet here she is. The furthest I got was a lousy month long trip round Europe with friends where we ran out of money and Myka had to save us.” She laughed. “God, I’ve never told mom and dad about that. As far as they’re concerned that trip was perfect. I don’t think I even thanked Myka. But then she did greet me at the airport with a lecture.”

“It isn’t too late to thank her.”

“I paid her back the money.” Tracy smiled. “It’s just that... Myka’s life sounds so interesting. Exciting. She’s travelling the world, drop-kicking bad guys in Timbuktu, and picking up hot British women. She’s like, American-Lady-James Bond. She’s doing all these awesome things, and what am I doing? I’m changing diapers.” She laughed sardonically. “When did I become the boring sister?”

Helena couldn’t answer that. She had never found Myka boring. She had difficulty reconciling the Myka of her childhood that Myka described with the woman she was now. And she suspected that she still would have found the shy awkward girl with her head in a book far more appealing than she ever would have found Tracy.

But there was a truth she could gladly offer Tracy.

“There’s nothing boring about being a mother,” She said. Tracy looked up at her, tired and worn and a little hopeful. “Nothing,” Helena reaffirmed. It had been the very best thing that Helena had done. Christina had been the best of her. There would never be anything in her life that was a greater achievement than Christina. And she had failed Christina, had continued to fail her even after she had lost her, but that didn’t take away from the memories she had and treasured. 

“Thank you,” Tracy said quietly. She shrugged a shoulder. “And sorry, you really didn’t need to hear all that. I’m just... I’m tired.”

“Quite alright. And as for the travelling, what on earth is stopping you now? Just take this one with you. You have the money, you have the means.”

“I dunno.” Tracy shrugged again. “Kevin’s job? Although, I guess he could do that from anywhere.” 

“Well there you go.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

It could be. Why didn’t Tracy see that it could be? Helena envied her opportunity. She would have loved to have taken Christina with her on her travels. It had been a completely unfeasible thing to do back then though, far too dangerous. 

Tracy climbed to her feet. She reached down and closed her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She took a moment, swinging her arms and rolling back her shoulders, she craned her neck from side to side and finally turned to Helena, a bright smile fixed on her face. She held out her arms expectently. “Okay, give me back my child. And, I dunno, go rescue Myka. I think dad dragged her into a conversation and he seemed pretty drunk when I was over there. God knows what kind of crap he’s saying to her.”

There wasn’t so much as a peep from Chloe as Helena handed her back to Tracy. And then the door banged open and Chloe’s eyes popped open and so did her mouth and she let out a gulp, then a hiccup, and then began to cry in earnest.

Tracy and Helena turned to glare at whichever inconsiderate person had caused this and, of course, it was Myka. Myka looked wild-eyed and dishevelled, there were marks on her upper arm that looked like finger shaped bruises, and her hair was a wild tangle. 

“Helena,” she gasped and then laughed a little hysterically. “I smell fudge.”

Of course she did.

/\/\/\/ 

It hadn’t been lost on Myka that Helena had been cozy-ing up with Chloe.

It hadn’t been lost on Myka that Helena had been bonding with Tracy over crying babies, stinky diapers, and whatever else it was that mothers discussed when they convened.

It definitely hadn’t escaped Myka’s notice that there was a dark cast to Helena’s expression that she was going to have to deal with; but it would have to wait because first they had to deal with whatever artefact had whammied her family.

She snapped on her purple gloves. Beside her Helena did the same and they both surveyed the carnage. Chairs were flung about, one of the tables had been turned over spilling its contents to the ground, its cloth still half on, and there were glasses and bottles strewn about the place. It looked more like there had been a small localised hurricane rather than a brief, but intense, scuffle.

Helena moved closer to Myka. “What exactly is the nature of the problem?” She asked.

Before Myka could answer her father turned around and moved a few steps away from the group. He flung his arms wide and grinned. “Sport!” he called. “Come give your old man a hug!”

Helena rocked back a step. “Ah. Well,” she said. “That is unsettling.”

“You think.” Myka seethed. Helena had a talent for under-statement that rivalled Pete’s. “There’s something here that’s making him act like this. Making him... Enthusiastically nice.”

“Perhaps,” Helena said slowly and Myka could hear the grin creeping into her tone. “Perhaps we are only given a finite amount of bitterness and he has finally dried up his internal well.”

“That is not funny. You are not funny.”

“I was being quite serious.”

“We missed you, sport,” her father called again. “Didn’t we miss her?”

“We missed you,” everyone chorused.

Helena blinked “Curious.” But she sounded thrilled, as though this was the best thing that could possibly have happened this weekend. She edged closer to Myka, not taking her eyes off the group. Her mother stood to her father’s side, her arm brushing his. They were flanked by their friends, Jon and Kath, and the waiter, Clark, and the bartender brought up the rear. Kevin loomed behind them, his thick arms swinging by his sides. “I would hazard a guess that Warren is the central focus of the artefact and that everyone else is just caught up in that. Have you been able to discern what the artefact is?”

“No.” Myka kept a wary eye on the group. The waiter looked more slack-jawed than usual. Before she had managed to escape them to go get Helena they had been clamouring all over her, patting her back, pulling at her arms, her hair, attempting to hug her.

“Something on your father’s person, perhaps? We will need to isolate him from the others.” She stepped away from Myka. “I’ll attempt to draw the crowds focus and you deal with Warren.”

“Helena.” Myka grabbed her arm before she could go. “Kevin got whammied after everyone else. I didn’t see him touch anything.”

Helena nodded. “I’ll be careful.” She moved off to the side, quickly and smoothly, stepping over the debris left by Myka’s last tussle with her family.

Myka squared back her shoulders. She took a purposeful step forward and locked eyes with her dad. He had narrow, beady eyes, even now when he was grinning from ear to ear they still looked stern and disapproving. It didn’t seem all that long ago she had struggled to look him in the eye. That she’d had to look just next to his eye, not quite meeting his gaze. If he noticed that she was avoiding looking him in the eye then he would command her to look him in the eye when he was talking to her, that it was disrespectful not to, how did she expect anyone to take her seriously if she couldn’t offer a simple measure of respect? 

She looked him in the eyes now, and, just as she had as a child, she felt a shiver of ice down her spine, felt her gut twist painfully, and again just as she had done as a child she locked her knees to stop herself from running and forced herself to stand up that bit straighter. 

“Dad,” she croaked. She swallowed, her throat was dry and she fruitlessly tried to work some moisture back into her mouth. “Dad, can you come here?”

He smiled. “You come here, sport. Come here. Your mom’s here.”

“I think... I think I’d prefer you come here. To me.” She resisted the urge to check on Helena. Myka had no idea how Helena planned on gaining the groups attention, they all seemed so focussed on her, following her father’s lead.

“Now sport,” he said and there was a hard edge to his voice that was all too familiar. “We’ve talked about this. You need to listen to your old man. I know what’s best for you. Don’t I know what’s best for her Jeannie?”

“You do, dear,” her mom replied with a sickeningly sweet smile plastered on her face.

“See, I know what’s best.” He spread his arms wide and smiled to match them. “Now come here, baby girl, come give daddy a hug.”

Myka gagged. It was ridiculous. Absurd! She had never, not once, ever in her life, called him daddy. Not even when she had been a child. She couldn’t even remember Tracy ever calling him that. 

Behind him Helena picked her way through the debris, frowning as her eyes scanned the various objects that littered the floor in case she saw the something that might be the artefact. Despite her earlier consumption of alcohol, she seemed pretty steady on her feet.

She tossed something at Kevin, hitting him in the side, gently. He didn’t even flinch, just kept gawping at Myka. “Kevin,” Helena said. No reaction. “Kevin!” There was still no reaction from him. Helena turned her attention from him, stepping behind the crowd to the waiter. She was clearly hesitant to touch any of them in case she too was whammied. “Waiter... Boy...” Helena’s face scrunched up.

“Clark,” Myka supplied for her.

Helena snapped her fingers. “Clark! Thank you. Clark, I would like another drink.”

She hadn’t even remembered his name. She had spent a portion of her evening flirting and tormenting him and she hadn’t even bothered to learn his name. It was almost funny.

Myka tore her eyes away from Helena, scared that she might divert her father’s attention and therefore the groups’ attention to her. They all seemed to be following his lead, hanging on his every word and movement. They were the puppets and he the puppet master.

He took a step towards her and instinctively Myka took one back. His suit was rumpled, his shirt creased, his tie flung back over his shoulder. He had never looked this dishevelled in his life. He had always prided himself on looking smart, on dressing neatly and well, appearances were usually the first impression and he always wanted to give a good first impression. She had always secretly suspected that was because he knew that the second he opened his mouth he would suck all the joy out of the room, so he had to, at the very least, look good.

Helena stopped, turned and faced Myka. She had a metal dish in one hand and a bottle in the other. She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows, silently questioning Myka or waiting for her to make the first move.

Myka squared back her shoulders and took a steadying breath. She stepped towards her father.

“Dad,” she started, unsure how to continue. She couldn’t see anything on him that might be the artefact, nothing that he hadn’t been wearing at the beginning of the night, and he had seemed normal then. “Dad,” she said again and licked her lips nervously. “This is important; have you picked up any weird objects? Or anything at all really. Or has something odd happened to you in, I don’t know, that last half-hour? Hour?”

He cocked his head to the side and actually seemed to consider the question. He shrugged, his shoulders lifting high enough to touch the sides of his head, and his hands turned out palms up. It would have been a comical gesture if Myka had a sense of humour about the situation. 

“Nope,” he said. “The only weird thing going on is that you won’t come here and give me a hug, kiddo.”

 

He took a step towards her just as Helena raised the dish and bottle above her head. She banged them together and Myka cringed at the noise.

“If I could divert your attention towards me!” Helena bellowed. She banged her improvised gong again for good measure.

Myka rolled her eyes. Helena clearly wasn’t as sober as she had been hoping.

She took a determined step towards her father. “Tell you what, dad I will make you a deal.” Her eyes darted to Helena who had discarded the bottle and dish. She looked back to her father. He was disconcertingly close to her now. “I will give you a hug if you first hand over your...” her eyes flickered over him, “Watch, tie, whatever is in your pockets, your jacket and your shoes.” She considered a moment. “Your socks too.” Just in case.

“Well there’s a problem there.” He took a step towards her and Myka instinctively stepped back. “See hat’s extortion, sport. I shouldn’t have to give you things to get a hug. I’m your dad. When I want a hug, you just give me a hug. Now come here.”

“No.” She shook her head and took another step back. “No dad.”

“What are you so afraid of?” He laughed.

“I’ve always been afraid of you,” she said quietly. He shouldn’t still have that kind of power over her. Never should have had that kind of power over her, but he had and he still did. One word from him in _that_ tone of voice and she was twelve years old again and hiding in her room from him.

It was stupid to be afraid of him still. It had been years since he’d had any real kind of power over her. She had moved on from him. The things she had accomplished, the evils she had defeated, the lives she had saved, and even the ones she had lost, they set her above him. She had achieved so much that there should have been nothing he could have said or done to affect her. But he could. His words were an axe and they cut away at the fragile frame-work of her self-worth.

She shook her head. She was not going to let him get to her. Not today. Especially not when he’d been whammied.

“No,” she said, swallowed, and then in a louder voice, “no, dad. You need to remove your jacket. You need to empty your pockets and you need to remove your shoes and your socks. Now.”

His eyes narrowed. “No, Myka, I can’t do that.” He sighed and shook his head in obvious disappointment. “We’ve talked about this, young lady. We’ve talked about your not listening, about your not doing what you’re told.” He took two quick strides forward and seized her wrist, his grip like iron. He didn’t look cheerful anymore, which was oddly comforting. His eyes had regained their usual hardness and he was looking at her in a familiar way, like he had when he lectured her, told her that maybe her best just wasn’t good enough, made her feel small and insignificant and scared.

And angry.

She pulled her arm but his grip was too strong. He squeezed her wrist painfully, pulling her arm up. His mouth was set in a grim line as he regarded her. He looked at her like he couldn’t quite believe that this was his daughter, that he couldn’t believe that this was his blood and that he’d had a hand in raising her. Like she was a mistake that he didn’t know how to rectify.

“You always do this,” he told her in an all too familiar aggrieved tone, weary disappointment dripping off of every word. “As soon as you get somewhere, as soon as you achieve something you mess it up. You drop the ball. You become complacent.”

“Shut up!” Myka pulled on her arm again trying to wrench it from his grip, but it was no good. She resisted the urge to hit him. “Helena!” she yelled.

“A moment,” Helena shouted back. She was still trying to divert the attention of the others. She had Clark by the arm and had moved him away, but as soon as she released him he wandered back over.

“Helena now!” The small group was closing in on her. The waiters and other guests were blank-eyed, staring forward. Kevin was slack-jawed and possibly drooling, his eyes bugging out as he stared ahead, her mom gazed beatifically up at her husband. “Helena!” Myka yelled again.

Helena finally abandoned her attempts to divert the others attention. She dashed over to Myka’s side, surveyed the situation. “Seize his free arm. I’ll pick his pocket.”

Myka reached for her father’s arm but he stepped back pulling her off balance. “Jeannie!” He snapped.

With a strength and speed that Myka had never known her mom possessed she swung her 

“Why are they turning violent?” Helena moved back as Myka’ mom followed after her with balled fists and with grim determination etched on her face. 

“Dad, stop it.” Myka pulled on her father’s grip again and again. The artefact must have increased his strength. There was no way he was this strong. “Dad, please! I don’t want mom to get hurt.”

“Your mother is fine, Myka,” he said with exaggerated patience. 

Myka turned her head just in time for her vision to be engulfed in green-blue light and for the familiar whine of a Tesla to assail her ears. She heard a body hit the ground. She blinked the spots of colour from her vision and craned her neck. Her mom was slumped on the ground unconscious. Helena stood further up the room with a small Tesla in her outstretched hand.

“What the hell?” Myka screeched.

“Mini-Tesla,” Helena explained calmly and unnecessarily; she knew about the mini-Tesla she just hadn’t known that Helena had one. “Claudia’s idea of course. She challenged me to make my own. I haven’t been able to create one that will hold a charge that will last more than two shots, however.” She shot a disgusted look at the Tesla in her hand.

“You shot my mom!”

“She’ll be fine darling,” Helena said in her I’m-talking-to-an-idiot voice and rolled her eyes.

“Not the point and you know it.” Myka turned her attention back to her father. His grip on her wrist had finally slackened and she wrenched it away from him. She stepped back from him, rubbing her wrist. She could already tell that she was going to have one hell of a bruise there.

Her father’s focus wasn’t on her though. He was staring down at his wife. His jaw was clenched and an angry dark flush worked its way up his neck.

“I see the problem,” he said quietly. His eyes briefly went to Myka’s before they locked on Helena. “She’s the problem. She’s a distraction. She needs to be removed.”

All eyes snapped towards Helena. Their expressions were no longer vacant but instead determined and sinister.

“Ah.” Helena said. They all moved towards her as one. “Bollocks.”

She raised the mini-Tesla again and fired. Kevin dropped to the floor and landed in an unconscious heap. She tossed the mini-Tesla away.

“What are you doing?” Myka screeched at her.

“Removing Kevin from the equation. Tracy would be upset if I were to hurt him.” 

That was oddly sweet, but missed Myka’s point entirely. “Helena!”

“I told you it was only good for two shots.” And she had wasted her last shot on Kevin.

“Why didn’t’ you shoot my dad?”

Helena blinked rapidly, clearly thinking over the situation. If she had shot Myka’s father than Myka would have been able to search him, retrieve the artefact and bag it. Helena’s shoulders slumped.

“I have had rather a lot to drink,” she muttered darkly.

“And whose fault is that?”

Helena glared at her as though it was Myka’s fault she had decided to get herself blind drunk. She continued to back away from the advancing throng.

Myka made to go to Helena but her father grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into the flesh of her bicep. His lips were drawn back into a snarl and it would have been a surprise if he started spitting or possibly frothing at the mouth. A sheen of sweat was coating his face and head, a vein was bulging near his temple, throbbing with each beat of his heart.

“Sorry dad.” She put her shoulder to his chest and forced him back. She pulled at his jacket with her free hand and he struggled against her. Helena wasn’t the only one who was proficient at picking pockets, and Myka emptied hid quickly: his wallet, keys, a neatly folded handkerchief that hopefully hadn’t been used, and a scrap of paper... All things she expected him to have. He let go of her arm and twisted in her grip, but she kept hold of his jacket and stepped around him, yanking it off of his shoulders. She quickly searched the inside pockets while he blinked in stupefied confusion. Her hand closed around a small metal cylinder. She pulled a pen from the pocket; it was old fountain pen and one that was well used. 

“Helena!” Myka turned, needing a static bag, and to make sure Helena was okay. 

Her father tackled her and the pen went flying from her grip. She sprawled on the floor. She raised her head just in time to see Helena fight her way out of the clamouring group surrounding her and catch the pen. Myka could kiss her, would absolutely do just that once she got the chance, and then she looked at Helena’s bare, gloveless hand clutching the pen triumphantly. She was going to slap her.

Helena started, wide-eyed at the pen in her hand. Any moment now she was going to say: “so proud” and join the black-eyed legions. The pen slid from Helena’s grip and clattered on the floor. She stumbled back. “Oh,” she choked and her hand covered her mouth.

Myka’s heart clenched. She would have to deal with that late . At least she definitely knew that he pen was the artefact.

She pushed up from the ground, made it two steps before her father’s hand wrapped around her ankle and pulled her leg sending her crashing to the ground again. She looked up. Helena hadn’t moved. She was staring down at the ground, staring at nothing, her hand over her mouth and her eyes wet with unshed tears. At least the group wasn’t trying to pull her to pieces anymore.

Myka kicked back at her father’s grip, felt her foot connect with flesh, and once again she pushed herself to her feet. The pen was by someone’s foot and she reached for it, only for it to be kicked away. Someone was grabbing her, different hands clamouring all over her, pulling and pushing her in different directions.

“Hold her still!” her father barked.

Myka struggled against their grips. She had lost track of the pen. Fingers dug into the flesh of her arms, someone had a handful of her hair and pulled it, winding their fingers tight in it. She hissed at the pain.

Her mom was stirring, Kevin was still unconscious.

“Helena,” Myka gasped. An arm snaked around Myka’s neck holding her secure. Helena’s head tilted, her eyes wide and filled with tears. A Slow tremulous smile curved up her face. “Myka,” she said, a please exhalation. “I’m so proud.”

Myka shrieked in frustration. She turned her focus back to her father. He was back on his feet, his eyes cold and fixed on her. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth; there was a smear of blood there, his lip split where her foot must have connected with him. It was difficult to feel bad about that.

“Dad.” She struggled against the hands holding her. “Dad!”

“I have tried, sport. I have tried so hard,” he said, hands clenched at his side, frown fixed in its usual place. He shook his head sadly. “So damned hard. You understand I don’t want to do this. I only ever wanted you to be happy. It’s important that you understand how saddened I am that it came to this, that this is what I am forced to do.”

“What the hell are you on about?”

“I have supported you, I have pushed you, I have dragged you at times, but I did it all for your own good. I did what was best for you.” He stopped before her and regarded her, his head tilted to the side and disappointment oozing off of him. “You’ve left me no choice, sport.”

The grim set of his mouth was all she needed to tell her what he was planning on doing. She started struggling in earnest, jerking against the hands that held her, the arm against her windpipe, wincing at the pull against her scalp, at the pressure of fingers digging in to her flesh.

“Dad!” She cried. “Stop! You’re under the influence of an artefact. Stop, just stop and think a moment!”

“Sorry, Myka.”

“Helena!” But Helena was on her knees, her head bowed and shoulders shaking. Myka’s eyes went to the door half-expecting, half-hoping for Pete to burst through and save the day. But Pete was back in South Dakota and probably in a food coma. She looked back to her dad, with his down-turned mouth and his small eyes gazing at her in disappointment and resignation.

“Dad.” She could hear the quiet desperation in her voice. “Dad, please stop.”

He reached up towards her with both hands, paused. “Just remember that I love you.”

She jerked her head back at the touch of his too warm fingers against her skin, the increasing pressure as he moved to take a firmer hold.

He gasped and flung himself backwards, his arms wind milling. His head snapped back and darkness flushed up his skin, rippling up his body and leaving him like steam rising from a hot surface. Behind her everyone else did the same. They gasped, let go of her and staggered back, falling to the floor.

Myka stumbled forward and turned in a shaky circle, taking in what was happening. Everyone was like her father, rigid and shaking, the dark rising off of them and dissipating into the air. Helena was on her knees, head back and mouth open as the effects of the artefact left her. Myka fought own the urge to go to her. She turned instead to the lone figure by the door.

Tracy stared back at Myka with wide scared eyes. A still crackling static bag held gingerly between her fingers.

“Is that...” She swallowed. “Was that right? Did I do that right?”

“Tracy!” Myka exhaled. Relief, joy and maybe a little anger flooding her. She strode over to her sister and pulled her into a tight hug. Tracy squeaked in surprise. Myka sighed. “Thank you.”

She stood back and took the bag from Tracy’s shaking hands and sealed the top. “And yes, you did that exactly right.”

Everyone was milling about in confusion. Her father stared at her with hard eyes, nodded, and then turned to her mom, helping her to her feet. She looked a little frazzled but otherwise okay. Kevin was still out-cold, or perhaps using this moment to catch up on some much needed sleep. Tracy hurried over to him. By the door a terrified looking Dee stood holding a thankfully quiet Chloe. Myka hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t among those that had been whammied.

Keeping the static bag clutched in her grip, Myka crossed the room. Helena was still on her knees. She looked a little confused and more than a little ruffled. She looked up at Myka.

“What happened?” Her cheeks were streaked with tears.

“Tracy saved the day.”

“Oh.” She looked away, frowned, and then looked back. “Good.”

Myka knelt down and wiped her thumbs along Helena’s cheeks. She pulled Helena into a hug. “I’m sorry.”

“What on earth for? You didn’t do anything.” 

“Exactly,” Myka chuckled. She leaned back and took Helena’s face in her hands. A frown pulled at Helena’s brow, confusion still evident in her eyes and in her tone.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” She kissed the crease between Helena’s eyes, the corner of her mouth, and pulled her into another hug. Helena took hold of Myka’s elbows gently. Her skin felt cold and clammy. “Are you alright?” Myka asked. “ Will you be alright? I’ve got to go try and explain this.”

“Of course I am. Mushrooms?”

“Probably.” Myka kissed her again, not quite ready to let go of her. She looked about at the frayed group, all confused, picking themselves up and dusting themselves off, and prepared herself to take care of this.


	6. Chapter 6

The kitchen was too small to have so many people standing around in it, but upon returning from the restaurant they had all, in unspoken agreement, decided to congregate there. Her mom had busied herself with making everyone tea and coffee, and had bustled around the kitchen determinedly as though hot beverages could somehow make the situation more bearable. It hadn’t. They all stood, paired off in their own spaces, gripping their mugs and refusing to speak.

The silence was thick with tension. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling for this room. Those times where her mom had insisted they sit down like a proper family and enjoy a family meal together had also been fraught with tension; with her father’s disappointed glances in her direction, her mother’s fussing, and Tracy’s disinterest.

Myka sipped her coffee. Helena stood close enough that their arms were touching. She was staring down into her mug, her expression carefully neutral. Across the room Kevin stared blearily into his own mug, he lifted it occasionally and slurped noisily. He looked as though Tracy should have put him down for the night as well as Chloe. His eyes were blood shot and sleep-swollen, his face so pale he looked gaunt. He swayed on his feet and the only thing that was probably keeping him upright was Tracy’s hand on his chest. 

Tracy looked mad. She wasn’t quite glaring at Myka but her expression was hard and pinched, and angry red splotches on her chest and neck were flaring up. 

Helena shifted, her arm brushing against Myka’s. She cleared her throat delicately, clearly intent on breaking the fragile silence. Myka tensed; didn’t Helena realise that this was just normal family time for them? That they would stand like this for at least ten more minutes not speaking and then her father would leave and they would all trail out as well? Didn’t she realise that these silences were the only thing that stopped this family from erupting into an argument that they would never come back from? It was the thin cement that kept this home together.

“There is a hint of citrus,” she said looking up from her mug to Myka’s mom.

“Yes. It’s an Earl Grey. A blue something or other.” Her mom shrugged. “I don’t remember. It was recommended in the store.”

“It’s very good.”

“Thank you.” She smiled. It was her first real smile in what felt like a long time, and, just like that, it and Helena’s words swept the tension aside and everyone started murmuring their agreement. 

Myka squeezed Helena’s arm. Sometimes Helena knew the exact right thing to say, and in this instant it almost made up for the times where she’d known the exact wrong thing to say, said it anyway, and had watched in cheerful morbid fascination as Myka had scrambled to save the situation around her.

“You’ll both be staying here tonight,” her mom said to Tracy and Kevin.

“Sure,” Tracy replied. She almost sounded cheerful and like her usual self. But there was stiffness to her posture that Myka wasn’t used to. Kevin nodded slowly and slurped more of his coffee. He seemed to have a little more colour in his cheeks and looked less like he might collapse at any moment. Tracy was still propping him up though.

Tracy looked to Myka again. Tracy wasn’t dumb, even if she had the annoying habit of sometimes pretending that she was. She had questions she wanted to ask. She could make connections; she wouldn’t have believed the absurd explanation that Myka had thought up to cover up the artefact. She was clearly already working on her own theories, and had already worked out enough to know that Myka was the one she needed to be questioning.

“I’m gonna go, uh, hit the hay.” Kevin drained the last of his coffee and nodded his thanks to Myka’s mom handing her the empty mug. He planted a kiss to Tracy’s cheek and tottered off, keeping a hand to the wall to steady himself. Tracy watched him go and then turned her accusing gaze to Myka as though Kevin’s condition was Myka’s fault. Myka turned to Helena to pass on this accusing gaze but she had a look of serene innocence and sipped at her tea delicately. 

Myka looked down into her own mug, annoyance and guilt warring inside her. Helena could at least have the good graces to look a little guilty.

“I should probably go take care of that... thing,” Helena said. She squeezed Myka’s arm as Myka’s had snapped towards her. She was going to contact the Warehouse. Myka knew this but it was a little difficult not to feel like Helena was abandoning her.

Helena smiled softly at her. She knew what Myka was thinking, what she was feeling, or at least had the semblance of an idea. She placed her mug on the counter behind her and then reached to trail her fingers along the line of Myka’s jaw. They held each other’s gaze, just for a moment, just long enough for it to feel like everyone else had slipped away and they were alone and the only ones that mattered. Helena’s smile was sad and tired, and Myka felt her guilt rear up again. Of course this situation was hard on Helena as well; she had been whammied after all. Helena exhaled through her nose, nodded, and she tapped her finger against Myka’s flesh. She dropped her hand, turning away. 

“Thank you for the tea. Goodnight.” She smiled again and swept from the room like a grand duchess, a perfect picture of poise and control. And Myka knew it was just a ruse. She could see the tenseness in Helena’s slim shoulders.

Myka dared a glance up. Tracy was still watching her, eyes narrowed. She leaned back against the fridge, her mug clutched in both hands tight enough that the skin of her fingers strained white. The kitchen table was between them and Myka was thankful for the barrier. When they were fighting as kids neither one of them would have hesitated to scramble across it to get to the other. Hopefully as adults they wouldn’t do that, especially not with their parents present.

Her parents were huddled close together at the table. It was sweet, if a little odd to see them so close together. They had never been a public display of affection kind of couple; there had always been a polite distance between them, even in the privacy of their own home. Now they stood so close they were barely touching, not quite reaching for each other but clearly finding reassurance in the others proximity. Myka had spent a portion of her childhood and young adulthood convinced that her parents only remained together out of habit and obligation rather than love. To see them like this was definitely weird, but a good weird.

Silence had descended on the room again. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as the previous one, and certainly nothing like the ones she had suffered through growing up.

The kitchen had never felt like a family room the way it should have. Always that bit too tidy, that bit too ordered and too sterile; it had never held the warmth needed to truly make it feel like a home. Not like the kitchen at the B&B that, even without Leena, had all that warmth and comfort that made it feel a like home. She wanted to be there now. Sitting around the table with Pete eating more Fruit Loops than was considered healthy, and Claudia nibbling at a Pop Tart while she wound up Steve, with Abigail perched on the counter watching them and joining in the jokes while Artie grumped and pretended to be annoyed by their antics. She wanted to be home with her family. Not in this cold room with its bad memories.

“Well then,” her mom said. She started gathering up the mugs and set to rinsing them in the sink. “I’m sure everyone’s tired and in need of a good night sleep.” She set the last mug down on the draining bored and turned to face them. Drying her hands on a tea towel her gaze shifted from Tracy to Myka and back again. “It is so good to have you both home.” She crossed the kitchen to Tracy and pulled her into a quick hug and then did the same to Myka. She stood between them, her eyes shining, and her smile a little brittle, and there was a definite tremor to her hands. “It doesn’t happen often enough.” She put a hand briefly to each of their cheeks and then sucked in a breath that sounded more like a stifled sob, nodded, and left. 

Myka swallowed down the guilt that rose like bile in her throat. It was definitely her fault; her fault for not calling home often enough for not visiting, for being a bad daughter and not-great sister. Her father might have been the one to cause the cracks in this family, but she was making more and the existing ones worse. 

Her dad was there now, standing in front of her and frowning as per usual. His jaw moved like he was chewing, like he was trying to make his mouth open and to speak but couldn’t quite manage it 

“Some night” he settled on. Myka barked a laugh and barely stopped herself from slapping her hand over her mouth. He grasped her shoulder and gave it a tight squeeze, nodded at her and then followed after his wife.

Tracy rolled her eyes. She crossed her arms and tilted her head, her eyes were locked on Myka and her expression was hard. 

“You’re mad,” Myka said.

“What was your first clue? And don’t answer that. It was clearly a rhetorical question.”

Myka winced. She rubbed her fingers around her wrist, along the bruise caused by her father’s grip earlier. “Okay. Well.” She blew out a breath. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Seriously?” Tracy pushed herself from the fridge. Her arms dropped to her side, her fingers flexing as she leaned forward slightly. She was in fight mode, bristling like a cat, getting ready to pull Myka’s hair or claw at her. But they weren’t kids anymore so probably Tracy would just bristle and not try to scalp Myka barehanded.

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

Tracy drew herself up. Her eyes widened, her nostrils flared and she pressed her mouth into a hard line. Splotches of red flushed her chest and neck just like it had done when she was a child, a warning light that told Myka when she needed to leave the room and go find a quiet place to read and wait for hurricane Tracy to finish its rampage.

“How about the truth? How about you explain all that... that... Crazy that just happened!” Tracy’s breaths were coming in short, sharp gasps; her whole body was trembling, little quakes that started from her feet and worked their way up the long length of her, making her limbs jerk sharply.

“I can’t,” Myka said quietly. She pressed her thumb to the bruise, softly at first and then harder until the tender flesh ached. 

“Convenient,” Tracy scoffed, and turned from Myka once more folding her arms across her chest. She hitched her shoulders up and held them stiffly, her posture rigid.

“I’m not allowed. I would, I would tell you if I could.” Myka dropped her hands to her side, curling and uncurling her fingers. 

“No. No, you wouldn’t. You’d keep it all to yourself. God, this is just you all over. You never tell me _anything._ ”

“That’s not true,” Myka said quietly. “I told you about Sam.”

“Fine,” Tracy bit off. She dropped her hands to her side but kept flexing her fingers like she was trying to work the tension out of her body. “You did tell me that much. But Myka...” She turned her head and swallowed. “Myka, I get that I’m not on your ridiculous brain level and that I don’t have your weird memory thing but – _god_ – don’t treat me like I’m stupid. I can put two and two together, I can work things out. Mom told me about when dad was sick, how you and your partner –”

“Pete.”

“– how you guys fixed it. How it involved a book and a pen, and I keep thinking about when you trashed the nursery.”

“Still really sorry about that.”

“Still _really_ mad about that.”

Myka caught Tracy’s eye and, there was nothing funny about the worry there, of the lines that creased her forehead or the hard clench of her jaw. Nothing funny about the tight press of her lips and the quivering of her body, but she laughed. It rumbled up her body from her gut and escaped her lips as a honking guffaw. She slapped her hand over her mouth to try and stop it but that only meant it blew against her hand and sounded even more ridiculous.

Tracy’s eyes widened and she stepped back, her mouth falling open. She looked pissed. Her shoulders rose up like a bristling cat ready to attack. And then she laughed too. Her body bowed forward and all the previous tension stored in it seemed to deflate. Myka dropped her hand from her mouth and laughed freely. Every time it seemed like either she or Tracy were going to get their giggles under control they caught each other’s eye and started all over again.

Finally their laughter eased. Tracy wiped her hand under her eye. Myka drew in several deep breaths. They both stilled and once more there was nothing funny about the situation.

She and Tracy had never been friends, there had been too much resentment between them as children and then too much distance between tem as adults. But there had been moments where it had seemed like they could be closer, like when Myka had told Tracy about Sam.

Myka sighed. “Look, Trace, I’m not not telling you just for the sake of keeping a secret. This is actually a secret. Very few people know the full extent of what I do, and it needs to stay that way.”

“What? Like its need to know?”

“Exactly.” Myka sagged in relief. Maybe if Tracy understood that then they could leave the conversation here. But of course Tracy didn’t leave the conversation there; it was not in Tracy’s nature to leave anything there, especially not conversations.

“Will it happen again?”

“What?”

Tracy folded her arms, half hugging herself for support and half donning an air of impatience. Her foot pointed outwards from a body at an angle like it might start tapping at any moment. “The pen, the nursery, will any of it happen again?”

“I hope not.” Myka knew her tone was far too breezy.

“But will it?” Tracy’s tone had a sharp edge.

Myka looked down at her hands. At the bruise on her wrist and the broken nail on her left thumb. As injuries went they were minor, she had suffered much worse over the years, but the fact that they were inflicted by her own father made them worse. Made it feel as though she had been hurt on a different level, somewhere deeper and unseen where only she was truly aware of them. 

She looked back up at Tracy and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not good enough. I need to know that my family is safe. This – whatever this is – it’s happened before. Will it happen again?” The sharp edge of her tone turned lethal and Myka felt it cut her down deep where her father had hurt her. Her family had always had the ability to hurt her deepest.

“It hasn’t happened that many times,” she muttered.

“Three times that I know of.” Tracy laughed but there was no humour to it. “Once is bad luck, twice is a coincidence, but three times?”

“That’s a pattern,” Myka said quietly. She closed her eyes. “I know. I know and I promise you that I’m going to look into it.”

“Kevin was knocked out. What if... What if something had happened to Chloe?”

Myka didn’t have an answer to that. She pinched the tip of her thumb between her other thumb and finger, feeling the broken nail bite into her flesh. She wanted to tell Tracy that it wouldn’t happen, that she would make sure that nothing would happen to Chloe or to Kevin, and that she would protect them. But she couldn’t. She would mean it and she would try her very best, but there was no way she could absolutely guarantee their safety, no matter how hard she tried.

She dropped her hands to her side and looked away from Tracy, looked to the decorative jars that her mom had filled with dried pasta instead since they were less judgemental and weren’t demanding answers from her that she wasn’t at liberty to give, and – Jesus – was that the same pasta from when she was a kid? She could feel Tracy’s eyes on her. She might have stopped bristling and might not have been as ready to attack Myka s she had been before, but Myka could feel the anger in her gaze. Myka rubbed her fingers across her forehead. She couldn’t deal with this right now; she didn’t have the energy or the strength. 

“Can we continue this in the morning?” She asked. Her fingers continued rubbing back and forth across her forehead, rhythmically, in what should have been a soothing gesture but she was too tense and was pressing too hard. She dropped her hand to her side and finally looked back to Tracy. “I need to check on some... stuff.” It was true, she did need to check in with the Warehouse and to make sure that Helena was alright, Myka hadn’t forgotten that she had been whammied and that she really needed to know that Helena was okay, but it still felt like she was offering Tracy a lame excuse just so she could escape.

“Crazy stuff?”

“Yeah.”

Tracy exhaled. “Sure,” she said tiredly. “Sure. I should probably go make sure Kevin’s still breathing.”

Myka winced. Once she had made sure that Helena was in fact alright she was going to kill her for Tesla-ing Kevin.

Tracy paused in the doorway. She didn’t look back at Myka. “I get that this wasn’t your fault and I am not – I am trying – not to blame you, but if this – this thing! – is going to happen, if it’s something that’s going to happen around you then I can’t have you around Chloe. I won’t put my family in danger.” She looked back then, her eyes briefly finding Myka’s before sliding away. She mumbled a goodnight and left.

Myka exhaled slowly. She could feel a headache building; there was tightness behind her eyes and a pressure on her temples that was only going to get steadily worse. She wanted to press her fingers to her eyes, press and pres and press until she forced the pressure and the pain away. Instead she rocked back on her heels, pressing down into the hardwood floor and rocked foreword again. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet.

She moved from the kitchen, switching the lights off, and up the hallway towards her bedroom, her movements mechanical as though she was on auto-pilot. She paused outside the door and listened. She could hear the indistinct murmur of Helena’s voice and the slightly more tinny and incomprehensible reply of someone on the other end of the Farnsworth. She turned into the bathroom; flicked on the awful fluorescent light above the mirror. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, then scoured the medicine cabinet for painkillers. Her headache was getting worse, not the pounding like she usually got but something tight and focussed, like a hot needle pushing into her temples and twisting. The best she could find was ibuprofen so she swallowed two dry. Tilting her head back to try and work them better down her throat. She slid the cabinet closed and stared at her reflection. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, made worse by the light. Fluorescents had that effect, like they could suck the youth out of someone and make them appear far older than they actually were. Myka tilted her head as she looked at her reflection. Her hair was a mess. It was telling of just how shaken Tracy was that she hadn’t commented on it.

Myka flicked the light off and left the room, turning towards her own. She pushed the door open and sidled around it. Helena was sat on the bed with the open Farnsworth in her hands.

“The artefact is safely bagged. Myka is conversing with her family and, as I have already told you, is fine. Myka.” Helena lifted her head and turned to Myka. She thrust the Farnsworth at her. “Please inform your partner that you are, in fact, not dead.”

Myka took the Farnsworth from Helena and looked down at the small screen. “Hey Pete,” she said as she shuffled round the edge of the bed to stand in the narrow space between it and the desk. Worry was etched into every line on Pete’s face. As soon as he saw her though it lifted, he grinned, his eyes bright with relief.

“Myka!” He cried out, relived. He pulled on the syllables of her name, stretching them out. What happened? I was half way through a Prisoner marathon when I was hit by a huge vibe. It felt like I got kicked in the...” He pulled a face and nodded at her knowingly, eyes wide and mouth stretched.

“I’m alright,” she replied, smiling softly. “There was an artefact, a pen. My dad got whammied.”

“He alright?”

“Yeah, he is. Everyone’s alright.” She ran her thumb along the edge of the Farnsworth. Pete looked tired. His hair was sticking up and there were definite shadows under his eyes, which were that bit too bright. There were also crumbs of something or other stuck to one side of his face. She could already tell what had happened; he had fallen asleep with his face on some chips. The crumbs would be worked into the couch and they would be finding bits of them for days. She should have felt annoyed by this but she couldn’t quite muster the feeling.

“Did you know that we are out of cheese?”

“No,” Myka said slowly, her lips twisting up into a genuine bright smile. “I did not know that.”

“Well, we are,” Pete said in the same tone of voice he’d use if they were suddenly out of goo. “I mean you think you had a bad evening? I had to have nachos with no melted cheese.”

“Goodnight Pete,” she chuckled and snapped the Farnsworth closed before he could reply. She tossed it into the hold all and straightened up, leaning back on the desk.

Helena was sat on the edge of the bed. She picked idly at an imaginary loose thread in her trousers.

“He would not take my word for it that you are alright,” She said sulkily.

Myka sighed. On top of everything else that had happened she really couldn’t deal with Helena being in a mood.

“He just worries,” she said.

“I know.” Helena stopped picking at her trousers and raised her head to look at Myka. “Are you? Alright, I mean.”

Myka nodded. She drummed her fingers against the underside of the desk. “Tracy’s asking questions.”

“Presumably about the artefact.”

“Yeah. And about other incidents.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. What could I tell her?”

Helena was silent. They both knew exactly what she could have told Tracy: the truth. It hadn’t occurred to Myka until this moment though that she could make Tracy her one and tell her the truth about her job. That it hadn’t occurred to her was probably a sure sign that she shouldn’t.

“Well, it isn’t a decision to be taken lightly,” Helena said casually.

Myka snorted. That was rich coming from a woman who had told a nine year old child in Boone. Helena didn’t react to Myka’s derisive snort. Boone, and specifically Adelaide, was on the list of things they did not talk about. It was just this ever present invisible weight that they carried between them, sometimes Myka carried more of it, more often Helena did. They did not speak of how Helena had made Adelaide her one. That was Helena’s part of the weight to carry alone. Myka didn’t think she could speak of it without revealing something small and ugly and jealous about herself. That Adelaide had carved a place in Helena’s heart that wasn’t Myka’s and never would be.

Again Myka tapped her fingers against the underside of the desk in an uneven beat. She could hear the traffic through the open window. Despite how tired she felt it actually wasn’t that late. Helena shifted restlessly and the bed creaked beneath her.

“I told Tracy about Sam,” Myka blurted.

“Did you?” Helena sounded cautiously interested.

“Yeah. I did.” When the weight of the secret had got to heavy, when the happiness and love she felt had been ready to burst out of her at a moment’s notice, she had called Tracy and told her about Sam. There hadn’t been anyone else she could tell. All her friends in Denver were either Secret Service and could never know two agents were dating, or were friends with both Sam and his wife. So she had told Tracy. She had called her, giddy with nerves and spent forty-one minutes babbling about weather, the economy, politics and the guy at the kiosk who always got her coffee wrong but for some reason she always went back to. Eventually Tracy had cut her off because she actually did have places to be and things to do, and demanded to know why Myka had really called her. And Myka had told her, quickly, breathlessly, a whisper because it was a secret and that’s how secrets were shared. Tracy had sucked in a noisy breath and her silence was deafening as Myka had suddenly, terrified thought that she had made a huge mistake, her mind racing: _Oh god, I shouldn’t have told her_ and _Oh god, how do I fix this?_ The weight of Tracy’s expected judgement had been unbearable. But then she had laughed and said, _“Oh god, Myka, you cannot tell mom and dad.”_ It had been okay. Tracy had not judged, she only demanded that she visit Myka because she wanted to hear everything and to be able to meet Sam.

“And did that help?”

“Yeah, yeah it helped.” Myka pushed herself up from the desk. Tracy hadn’t, as far as she knew, told anyone about Sam. When Sam had been killed her mom and dad only knew that an agent had died, that he worked with Myka. They had been sad that he died but in that was that most people were whenever they read something tragic in the paper, the sympathy only lasted as long as the first sip of coffee or until the page was turned. Tracy had come to stay with her through the funeral and several days afterwards.

“Do you think I should tell her?” Myka circled her fingers around the bruise on her wrist. Helena watched her motions; she took Myka’s bruised wrist in hand, her thumb gently tracing the discoloured pattern of it and she brought it to her lips, kissing it lightly.

“I cannot possibly make that decision for you,” she murmured her breath warm against Myka’s already heated skin. 

“I’m not.” Myka licked her lips as Helena once again kissed the bruise. “I’m not asking you to decide for me. I’m asking for your opinion.”

“My opinion on this matter is largely irrelevant.”

“It’s an opinion, one that I’m asking for. How can that be irrelevant?”

“I don’t know Tracy well enough. I don’t know.” Helena turned her head and her lips twisted. “I don’t know enough about your relationship with her to form an opinion on whether or not you should make her your one.”

Myka blew out an exasperated breath and twisted her wrist from Helena’s hand. Sometimes it felt as though Helena went out of her way to be unhelpful, as though she enjoyed being infuriating.

Helena looked up at Myka. “The only question you should be asking yourself is this: do you want Tracy to know?”

“I don’t know,” Myka answered. She sighed and touched her hair, bunching it in her fist and letting it drop. “I don’t think telling her would be a bad idea. I mean, I told her about Sam and that worked out. But I keep thinking that I only get one person to tell, one person in the whole world. What if telling Tracy is a huge mistake, a waste of my one? What if I meet someone I want to tell?”

Helena reared back. “Who exactly are you going to meet who you are going to share the Warehouse with? Is this a forewarning, should I be concerned?”

“What? No. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” Helena’s voice had taken on that haughty tone that she assumed when she was hurt and offended and pretending to be anything but.

“I don’t know!” Myka threw up her hands and stepped back, putting careful distance between her and Helena. “Just that this is a big decision and I don’t want to get it wrong.”

Helena’s expression softened. “You don’t have to decide now. Wait till we are home. Talk to Pete first.”

“I kinda think that I do need to decide now. Tracy, she’s got some of it worked out, she wanted to know if dangerous things like this happened often around me.” Myka laughed weakly. “She said that if they do then I can’t be part of Chloe’s life.”

Helena’s eyebrows rose. She shifted back on the bed making it creak loudly. “That is... unfortunate.” She ran her hands through her hair, her eyes focussing on the wall behind Myka. “I honestly cannot say that I disagree with her.”

Myka fell back against the desk. She had known that Helena would see it this way. She had known and yet it still felt like she had been punched in the gut. A small betrayal that when compared to Helena’s other betrayals should have been insignificant, but still managed to sting. A small reminder that maybe this wasn’t the life Helena wanted for herself, that a part of her wanted something smaller and safer, and that she had found that.

Until Myka had taken it away.

Helena had tried so hard to keep that quiet little life she had created with Nate and Adelaide away from artefacts and the Warehouse, but it had caught up with her regardless.

Myka raised her head to meet Helena’s eye. Helena was waiting for her, for her to work it through in her head and come to a conclusion. Judging by the hint of a smile pulling at the corners of helena’s mouth she already knew what Myka had decided.

“Cutting me out of her life won’t protect her family from artefacts,” Myka said. “We deal with artefacts affecting the lives of normal people all the time. Just normal, average people caught up in something out of their control. But having me in her life could protect her. If she knew what she was looking for then she could call me.”

Helena’s lips stretched into a wide, pleased smile. “Then I think you have your answer, don’t you?”

“I guess I do.” And she did. She still had some concerns, some pros and cons to weight up, but she had decided. She would tell Tracy. Exactly how much she would tell Tracy was the next question, but for now she felt things shift into place in her mind, to settle comfortably. She even felt a lessoning of the tension in her chest and, thank god, the ibuprofen was kicking in so her head felt less like there was a skewer being driven into her temple.

Helena had shuffled back on the bed and was leaning against the wall. She had undone the top most buttons of her shirt and it was hanging open showing a sliver of pale inviting skin. 

Myka’s gaze slid down her, from her face to the opening of her shirt and further down the length of her legs and to her feet that hung in the air from the bed. She had done it purposefully to distract Myka, had probably been slowly undoing the shirt buttons for most of the conversation. Myka felt a slight twinge of guilt and disappointment that she had been too preoccupied with her thoughts on Tracy to notice what Helena was doing. She reached forward and pinched the sock at Helena’s toe. She pulled it off and tossed it aside in one smooth motion. Helena wriggled her toes in the air. Myka raised her eyes to Helena’s; Helena raised a quizzical brow at Myka and her lips twisted to the side in a barely contained smirk.

There were so many reasons why they shouldn’t do this, chief among them what she had listed last night. The slightest pressure on this bed set of a cacophony of creaks and groans that could easily be heard through the thin walls of the apartment. And, yes, she would like for this room to at least retain the illusion of innocence. But it had been such a day, and even though she had made a decision regarding Tracy she could still feel the stress of the day constraining her, like a second skin that was too tight. Her mind was still a knot of jumbled thoughts and emotions, still weighted down by old resentments. And Helena, beautiful Helena, was so very good at cutting through that tangled web, at sweeping clean the clutter of her mind. And she was here, slouched down and looking at Myka just as intently as Myka was watching her. Her hair down and her lips parted as her chest rose and fell in an easy slow rhythm. Her dark eyes were filled with need and want and love.

Myka climbed on the bed, shuffling on her knees. She nudged a leg awkwardly over Helena’s legs, and had to put a hand to the wall as she fell forward. She had never mastered the art of manoeuvring smoothly on a mattress. Her dress rode up her thighs as she settled herself, straddling Helena’s thighs.

Helena’s hand moved up Myka’s legs, her fingertips gently brushing up from the top of her knees up her thighs to play idly with the hemline of Myka’s dress. 

“Are you okay?” Myka asked. She kept her hand on the wall, the other played with the soft strands of Helena’s hair.

“Of course.”

“Helena.” Myka sighed, her head dipping.

“Truly, I am,” Helena insisted. “I barely feel intoxicated at all anymore.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. You got whammied.” Myka lifted her head and let her eyes wander over Helena’s face. Her eyes were rimmed pink and bleary from tiredness. “You should need to be more careful. Losing your glove? What was that about?”

“My apologies.” Helena gave Myka’s thigh a squeeze. “It won’t happen again.”

“I really don’t believe you.” But Myka was smiling. She trailed her hand down Helena’s neck to the exposed skin of her chest, feeling Helena’s breath jump, and she undid the last few buttons of Helena’s shirt with ruthless efficiency.

“I thought that we would tarnish your childhood,” Helena said. Her eyes were intent on where her hands played with Myka’s dress, folding the fabric back and slipping the tips of her fingers beneath it.

“Helena.”

“Hmm?” Helena looked up. Her hands slid up to cup Myka’s ass.

“Shut up,” Myka told her quietly and Helena grinned. “Kiss me.”

Helena pushed herself up as she pulled Myka closer towards her, and pressed her mouth to Myka’s. Myka seized her face in her hands all the better to angle her head exactly where she wanted her. Helena’s mouth opened and she made a pleased noise, her arm tightening around Myka’s back and pulling her in tight.

It was pretty easy after that to ignore the symphony of old springs and broken slats creaking and groaning beneath them.


End file.
